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the Entire Planet

A streamlined production “3D Studio MAX R2” Produced by Kinetix
Directed by PROFESSIONAL ANIMATORS AND TECHNICAL DIRECTORS

A DIVISION OF AUTODESK, INC.

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3D elements created in 3D Studio MAX by Mondo Media, www.mondomed.com

THE Ansa} naa Rat

Thi estos nee with the fe ee ——- tricky, but well worth it. It was web

technology that assuaged my how- emt CO rel hace (Kee ara Cec hee NVC enn and ny eS ts

for instant communication. We also used the phone. On a Macintosh you can do an instant screen
ele arpa oot oy holding down the shift, command and the number uae oe Cropping to the

important stuff and jpegging it made for easy-to-send-over-the-net visuals. Mondo is on the web at

-www.mondo2000.com and our marketing director, Beth Slatkin, did all ale sei) eeeye Cen toners) aa ser
olde] omSt Cosco) brates while I trekked out across Europe after the beatae ona ce) coe irene

as Iyeta ad SecR RC aMt(o ata eyo ct: eCouCemm Keron nt Kore eats) Lalrl <a SEN TiCOR eee tt mmstey

oe thanks co oo ae ee tal and Co eM a on o pues Fehon.

ois

_ The ever- etre ree Pana ae ait ie leit oe aor ie frst} Bir td aeneeon ee

atone only did the cover, but also the spine, a collage using his friend Joel Wheeler's ooatarirl reer se\ Oem [

he forged new ground with his photos, design and layouts for the Nina Hagen article, AND a special

Sree velnmeatladcamnsiametc@)iccaclclts piece. Tom flew to L.A. with Steve Beck and captured —
Oliver's visual story. AND Tom’s-forever-luscious-eye-candy Fashion, he brings us Cuban darlings
(however cunning and wicked). AND, with the help of make-up artist David Searle, Tom shot Orbital

rae eee Music Sas Ever an artist, AN De rz) vege :

Aint

GusGus (a band, designers, photographers, filmmakers, cute & handsome kids in

sweaters who our music editor Rob Phoenix met and liked) guest = rl & remix
our Electronic Music section. All the way

~ acool grace to the globalism of MONDO. ee

PB ties es ae

Cec a oe eFerateen eye Knde ee nr

ey 21S LP
Byer itoty2 on Berra Quarterly, a long time friend of our —
_ erstwhile managing editor Cedric Puleston, interviewed,
edited and designed the Frank Miller article. Mischa hasasexy __
RON VaAKey ecm nave UmnVTouMmenmrsteu Ven celunineesecbivebi elie _
mc (oreteacuoerettCaimn vere auetiat arte conjureupfleshandbloodin = ¥ ne
my mind Cai I mo clases —— Miller comics. — |

& Nina

Stylists Jorjee

ee ae bo - / Bustier: Azadine NIE)

ee i 1 3000

over there in Iceland, these info artists add ~ A BO T T = Ls a ¥

Hair & Make-up: Jorjee | |

Se EEC

Using their own photographs of nature they ee: oo ane :

Publisher Fun City MegaMedia
Domineditrix Queen Mu
a Dicraome sir aaa
Associate Publisher Beth Slatkin
Science Editor Charles Ostman
2 Music Editor Robert Phoenix
Managing Editor Mo Lohaus

Guest Designers Tom Pitts - |

Gus Gus

Pete McCracken

Mischa Beitz
Po ean crae ici arm alec

Heide Foley

SEP US ett
STC (sh ae Wa
subscriptions@mondo2000.com

PO ELLE
tel: 510-559-2060 S
ACL @Ry | st)! 74/4
ESOT rattan

ISSUES Ue Maa (ath YN:

Toy and weird stuff ieraeltae Stephen Webster has sent me pix or

Pe See uy Te Ue — LULU
Heartfelt thanks to Eric Gullichsen, David Kalish, and Richard oe
Kudos to our beloved Jennifer Slatkin, a.k.a. Ad Matrix. And ce our old friends
Tulip Graphics and Canterbury Press in Berkeley. |

years, and finally I wised up and got him in this issue, right here on the
masthead page. For the letters we were inspired by one of DAH’s edgy

photos, so much so that we reinvented the section to go with it (look roe Mo thanks: Karen Wiessen, publicist for Soul Coughing; Gene Mallove

Sabatino, Mark Comings, Brian O'Leary, MY Frau Sitte, ie eee

Thor, Sweet Princess and Kyle.

the t-shirt soon). I did a Siren shoot for the stitch-in & blow-in cards with
the help of stylist Cynthia Lueng, models Andrea Marie and Star from
Look in SF, and a few delicate props from the Bone Room and Tupper & Rob thanks: the goddesses at Formula, Girlie Acton: Green Galactic and
Shorefire; Dr ”O” the Sushi Messiah, Cosmo and especially the divine Vrah Diva.
We all thank: Erich Shienke and the CoMA folks; Rudy Rucker, Jr. and
Magnolia Editions; CellSpace; Stephan Williams, Will Linn and the generous —
help from Blasthaus (or was that MM?), Noah Thorp, Isaac Feldman, and

Seperate Ways—for their musical maddness. And Andy for marrying me.

Reed Music. Photos in the Electronica section came from the record
companies, except for Tom Pitt’s uncanny shot of Orbital (taken at the
Beresford) and my dramatic portrait of Percy Howard (done here in the, um,
salon). Steve Kromer generously and warmly let me dig through his
stacks of family photos to pick the definitive ”JPB-behind-the-facade”
glimpses for the Barlow interview. David Rankin and Peter Hamlin were -
VOTED GOD’S GIFT TO GRAPHICS GURUS — Macworld (Dec ’97)
~ Thanks, God. And thanks Rob for talking to Molly Ford at UMAX who sent the
5900 604e/233 mac clone. This fast toy arrived with a 2.1 GB SCSI hard drive, 32
MB of RAM (upgradable to 1040MB whew!) and 4MB of VRAM which drives my
| 17” Lapis monitor. It has 7 external, as well as 7 internal |
SCSI ports and I have just one left for Yamaha to send the
CRW 4260. This single processor CPU was my willing date,
but I'm ready to go double dutch with the s900/250DP RAID.
With Apple pulling licenses, prices are dropping to very

two last minute serendipitous finds for the Melatonin extract. DAH’s
abstracts allowed me to conceptualize the very fringey Zero Point Energy.
Charles Ostman humoured me with great willingness for the Laser
Weapons pix and Mark Shepherd (Brutal Gift & Co.) rendered the ever
once CruleneCocbwrerciecvitcemmelCoce Queen Mu was Cite acer emaiceed nme!
this issue’s video games artist, Kino, whom Chris Hudak introduced to
us. Kino wins a big extra sentence here for adroitly following my direc-
tion to do a double truck spread leaving a place within the image for text.
Of course, we found the intriguing, shadowy, murky background sooo

- beautiful we hated to put any type over it anyhow... Speaking of type, attractive levels. Get a cheap clone now, Apple obsoletes
Psy/Ops, Mondo’s official font foundry, has a new web site.

SOOM este cee act aroemobenltcce TANCE

—Heide Foley

Checkout their le font designs at we

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: 1) Using the Pen toa, draw
a path around the portion
you desire to cutout from
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At the areas ao using
the Pen tool just doesn’t
ut it—don’t. Get the
fourier ays
aa careful to keep the
path within the lines of
the desired shape. Make
the path a selection and
Aven leer me rey ireCle

2) Using the Lasso tool
draw a selection around
the hard-to-get edges
and copy this part of the
image.

3) Don’t deselect. Without
deselecting create a new
channel. Be sure the

a eo

ae reflects UINCe UAW eEN
relebelecenceraeyelersie

_ 4) Paste the image into
the floating selection.
This keeps it in the exact

same spot, assuring a
dead-on cutout.

5) Use the eye-dropper
in Levels to contrast the
background and image.
The erase tool and air-
brush may be needed to
get rid of highlights.

6) Now load this selection
onto the one created with
the path and delete.

The result is a very precise
outline of the area you
want to cut out wo the

Reo ace

Separating an image hone ee is acommon hes when appropriating tae: for illustrations or ronnie an clenent for design
purposes. Sometimes doing an insanely great cutout can be super easy. Unfortuanatelly, it only works when the element you want to cut
. a it SUNY well conn acai Doe ou need co intetecelels Cee Castel ona i Pe cat Da ieene oH pee cer

EP nenorcenena dete
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Modify menu or softening
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load the selection onto
the layer you want to cut
out of the background
(you many need to invert
your selection first).

For tips on creating
: SEE see a DO
_ issue | 16, .

The spirit of time.

Xemex Avenue. Case: stainless steel, brushed, laterally polished, bracelet: stainless steel. Water-resistant to 30m. Ref. 2016. Design Killing.

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$ Wl es € WA T €-H
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Photograph by DAH

WIE AWARE CLO

Do you really think this very
american-modern-folklore has such
an inherent value so as to be
portrayed with a post-industrial
psychedelic-influenced tech
jargon? if the Net is about a new
language, you’d better turn to
poetry, it’s awfully inventive in its
obsolescence... Don’t you have
the feeling that to be more than
an .alt-centered magazine you
should include more intemporal
talk and subjects? And you have
plenty of them at hand, being in
that imaginary world of high
tech mysteries out there in
California.

My point could be this: How
do you figure, in the case of an
american ideologized world, our

common lives on earth? In the
perspective of the rule of
american symbols—which is to
my mind each day more and more
accurate but does not necessarily
fit in the ancestral manners of
many peoples—what could
survive of an intellectual bio-
diversity? And if one could
interpret the Net existence as a
somehow brilliant metaphor of
the organic world, a sphere
echoing the terrestrial sphere, it
has also the role of avoiding the
america-centered Weltanschauung.
Maybe | should stop reading
ondo.

rno David

, impasse de la Source
rance

MONDO [40] 2000

This america-centered Weltanschauung is
that one and the same which to your mind
is each day more and more accurate? Try
giving up language masturbation and go
for the real thing—communication. H.E.

You rat bastid, you! Here | am, 33
years old and fat, living a humdrum
existence doing planetarium shows
and downloading titty pictures
from the net, thinking that the
high-octane, rapid-cognition,
FTP->Gopher->WWWV, smart-
drug-using, techno-house-
listening, tarot-card-forecasting,
C++ programming, Al developing
days of my twenties are gone for
good, when suddenly | get the
latest (the last?) issue of Mondo
2000 and just as it did when | saw

it for the first time in 1992, IT

Now | am unhappy, because
instead of concentrating on doing
“The Earth is Bigger than the
Moon” for eight year-olds, | want
to design self-communing avatars,
but before | do that | want to
write a book about Atlantis and
study some disinformation and
hump Reese Witherspoon ’til she
evaporates. And that’s just right
now—| still haven’t finished the
damn thing because | got dizzy.

As you did in 1992, you ripped
me out of black and white and
dropped me into technicolor, and
| will NOT forgive you for it!

along with lots of magazines and

Patrick DiJusto

R.U. & MONDO FOLK,

Today, | picked up a copy of the new
issue of Mondo at WaldenBooks
down here in de bayou (Lafayette,
LA). All | can say is, “You are
Queens & Princes among
editors/writers/layout-doods-&-
grrris. I’ve read every issue of
Mondo from its inception (actually, |
began w/ High Frontiers... but that
is a long time & many tabs ago...
get's me wet-eyed & nostalgic just
thinking about dem daze...):

THIS IS THE BEST MONDO
YET / YOU RULE THE
NEWSSTANDS & SHD BE
NOMINATED FOR EVERY
MAGAZINE AWARD DEY IS.
The depth, the intelligence, the
clarity of yr thinking—in the
interviews (R.U., you are the
master... I’m pretty keen... but
you are the master...), the choice
of persons-to-be interviewed, the
angles you've taken, all genius. &
that’s just the interviews. The
essay-contributions are groovy
too (I sent Chris Hudak e-mail
about five nights ago, and, lo &
behold, he shows up in yr pages...

We (this Tribe, this Thing that
is Happening) are the Vibe.

Wired, Yahoo (especially

Yahoo, p.u.), all the cyberslicks,
have much to worry about:
Mondo is back in a big bad way...
Am FUCKING GLAD to see it’s so.

Warmest of the Warm,
Todd Brendan Fahey

Publisher, Far Gone Books
PO. Box 43745

Lafayette, LA 70504-3745
fargone@popalex|.linknet

! trademark rights in the names,
~“Mondo” and “Mondo 2000.”

As you know, the word “mondo”
means “world” in Spanish and is
also used extensively in our culture
as a synonym for the adjectives
“large” or “huge.” MSNBC used
the word “mondo” in these
headlines to signify that this
section was essentially a huge
guide of links to other sites of

_ interest on the Internet.

DEAR EDITOR,

A little over a couple of years ago
| was barreling through the state
of New Mexico and stopped ina
groovy little cafe in Albuquerque
that served a damn good latte

journals and zine-like stuff to

_ peruse. | saw Mondo 2000 for

_ the first time and a really big “wow*

- curtain and the flying champagne

_ Love and kisses,
_ Mindy

_ DEAR MS. KENNEDY:
~ Merrill Brown asked me to respond

formed in my head. I’ve read your
magazine ever since... and recently
was truly excited to find myself at
the Crucible Steel Gallery opening

of Mondo’s latest offerings. Seeing

_ those covers up close and fiery

was a little like a wet dream. | !

- got to meet the Art Director! !
DEAR MONDO:

~|am currently working on a

Between the art-tattoos
happening on the Persian rug, the
slithery music behind the velvet

corks, | gotta tell ya, it was the
best part of the CoMA Fest.
Great job!

to your July 29 letter regarding —
your concern over MSNBC's use of ©

~ the name, “MSNBC Mondo Guide” —
and the sub-section names,

“Mondo Movies’, “Mondo Music’,

denies any wrongdoing in using the
word “mondo” in the above
headlines and did not in any way
infringe or dilute your alleged

MONDO [41] 2000

Nevertheless, to avoid a
nuisance claim by your company,
MSNBC has decided to remove this
feature name from its web site and
consider new names. This action

_ in no way prejudices MSNBC, NBC
_or Microsoft or impacts its future

decisions to adopt the word

“mondo” in other manners.
~Because MSNBC has removed
the “Mondo Guide” name and sub-
section names from its web site,

_ we will consider this matter closed.

Sincerely,

Scott Behm, Corporate Attorney
Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA

documentary film called THE
MORRISON CASE: Dead or Alive—

the subject being the possibility
that Jim Morrison faked his own

death in 1971. There are several
indications suggesting that this is

the case. One such being that Jim

Morrison’s son, Cliff Morrison,
lives here in Los Angeles. Yet the

~non fiction book No One Here

Gets Out Alive states on page 317

that Jim Morrison’s wife, Patricia

Kennealy had an abortion, and
that there never was a child.

There are many more discrepancies
_when you investigate the Morrison
- “Mondo Books”, “Mondo Cyber” __
~ and “Mondo Web Sites.” MSNBC

case, so to resolve this enigma |
propose that an SIR (Subsurface

_ Interface Radar) test be performed
on the grave. Essentially this test

is an X-ray of the grave and will

_ expose a high definition video

image of what actually lies there.
Based on my research, | feel that
this test will show Jim Morrision’s
grave to be empty.

Just a story idea you might be
interested in. If you have any
comments or questions please
call me.

Sincerely,

Michael Noonan
Hollywood, CA

DEAR EDITORS,

In the wake of Waco, Ruby Ridge,
the Oklahoma City bombing and
numerous other domestic
incursions, an “anti-terrorist” bill
has been passed, additional federal
and local law enforcement has
been funded to the tune of

$ | ,000,000,000, airport security
has been tightened to the point
of the absurd, privacy and First

prisons have been constructed at
an alarming rate.

The Anti-Terrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of

1996, Public Law 104-132 on April

24th, 1996 (S.735 introduced by
Sen. Dole) was passed despite
opposition by a wide mixture of
strange bedfellows across the
political spectrum. It has wide-
reaching consequences that ought
to chill the spine of every decent
American born into the luxury of
freedom in this increasingly
unfree New World Order. Some
of the features of this law are:
it establishes a five-member
commission to study activities
of federal law enforcement
agencies; removal of protections
on interception of wireless
messages; increased scope of
BATF; prohibitions on providing
material support of any kind to

(with no measures for appeal) if
the government believes they
are agents for foreign terrorists;
exception to rules of discovery
in civil proceedings when the
government claims classified
materials are involved; habeas
corpus reform will curtail the
ability to appeal previous court
decisions where evidence was
destroyed or suppressed by
prosecutors (as in Waco and
Oklahoma City); authorizes
antiterrorism training programs.
The military-industrial complex
so prevalent during the Cold
War and Vietnam years has
transformed into the prison-
industrial-police-attorney
complex, resharpening its focus
from a war against the Soviets to
a war against the individual
liberties of the American people.
It is time to wake up to this peril.

Amendment rights have been
increasingly attacked, censorship
is on the rise, a national |.D. card
instituted, welfare privatized,
prisoner rights curtailed, and

organizations the Attorney
General or Secretary of State
have deemed as international
terrorist organizations; freezing of ©
domestic groups’ bank accounts

_ Johnny Liberty

- Cascadian Resource Center
[Johnny Liberty is a well-known
lecturer on personal sovereignty and

let it rip

ju-ju space jazz

7 Buead, - EY, iam
pa Tem = |b ||

[afal tt pe] 8c] 8 |e |p pe

the Author of Sovereign American’s

Handbook. He can be reached at:
800.299.4497]

While Mondo has been surfing
the light fantastic, ominous
perturbations have been coming out
of Washington. Are you folks
aware of Public Law 104-132—the
Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Law? You should be.

Are you “likely to engage” in the
“gathering of information” related
to the Federal Government or its
Officers? Do you provide “any
kind of material support including
a safe house, transportation,
communications, funds...or training”
to “any individual or organization”
you “reasonably should know”
plans to do so? (Do you show your
kids or sibs how to surf the Net, or
subscribe to any publication which
acknowledges the intra-beltway

circus or its performers?)
TERRORIST!!!

Mewie - Grice coce:
Pring S@@) Jac ~ @rkiet coce:

eb Marley -artist cede:

Gathering information on
government activities, or
supporting publications or non-
profit groups which do, now
legally constitutes terrorism.
And if we’re loud enough or vocal
enough in holding legislators
responsible for their actions (or
holding them up to public ridicule),
the President, Secretary of State,
or Attorney General may simply
declare us “terrorists.” Any of us.
At any time. “The determination
of the Attorney General...shall be
controlling and shall not be
subject to review by any court.’
“No question concerning the
validity of the issuance of such
designation may be raised by a
defendant in a criminal
prosecution as a defense in or as
an objection to any trial or
hearing.’ Done deal.

As “terrorists”—and we are all
“terrorists” waiting to be so
designated—we “shall have no
right of discovery of
information... nor... the right
to seek suppression of evidence.

Further the government is
authorized to use...the fruits of
electronic surveillance and/or
unconsented physical search.”

And what are the teeth?

Per Public Law 95-147 “all
depositories of public monies...
and insured institutions... shall
perform duties as fiscal agents of
the United States”—such as
seizing all our assets and canceling
our credit cards the day we are
designated “terrorists.” Trial?
What trial? How're we gonna
find gas money to get to work?
How’re we gonna eat? How're
we gonna go anywhere? Hope
we ve gotta lotta high-end
electronics and a soft-hearted
pawn broker handy.

And if we do? Or if we keep a
few K in gold under the mattress
for just such an occasion?
“Assistance may be requested
from any Federal, State or local
agency, including the Army, Navy
or Air Force...” Now let’s not get

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paranoid, but do you really want
to know about the “Effective
Death Penalty” part of this law?
Go to www.thomas.loc.gov and
check it out.

As for me, I’m canceling my
subscription to Harper’s and
burying my head in a stack of
Mondos... unless... of course...
you print this letter.

deep C

DEAR MONdOjidZ

| read about you guys for years in
Rushkoff and Dery and all of that
cyberfoo... and | thought you
were a buncha wacked out new
age utopians ripped to the gills on
smart drugs, lsd and high priced
toys for silly brats. Then | stayed
with a friend who happened to
have the full collection. Man, did
they ever get it wrong.

HHHey... you guys are highly
literate, skeptical to the point of
paranoia, and obviously very
post-new age. Oh yeah, and
probably wacked to the gills as
well.

Keep up the good work.

Brian Mancini
Philadelphia, PA.

MONDO 2000

Issue #16 promises Reese
Witherspoon on the cover. Reese,
babe goddess of my every fantasy,
and a smarty pants to boot...
WHERE IS SHE????!!!! All you have
is that interview with the dood
who did Freeway (a killer movie
tho). He’s cool but why no Reese
interview?

Oh well. Liked the William
Gibson and the CIA/LSD thing.
And any magazine that gets behind
Robyn Hitchcock is ok in my book.

Joe Serrano
Babylon, New York

MONDO [44] 2000

QUEEN MU AND COMPANY
I’m ecstatic over yet another
MONDO finally on my doorstep.
The issue (#16) had a nice flow
to it... zeitgeist pifata indeed
(whatever the hell that means). It

- gets so nicely thick and paranoid

at the center what with Harry
Horse, Todd Fahey, Disnformation,

_ and that Halperin weirdo. And
- then the vibe smoothes with the

music section. (Nice Yoko interview,

_ although she may as well have

been talking to herself).

Speaking of James Halperin,
consider that his clueless
Orwellian fantasies have earned

a great deal of praise and

attention in the media. We're
living in a time when people we
used to think of as rational will
actually justify the de facto
censorship of a film based on
Nabokov’s Lolita on ethical
grounds. It’s a pod people
country full of promise keepers,
promising to never utter a
discouraging word. Al Gore is

on the TV pleading with artists

to form a “partnership” with

the government so that there'll
be “social responsibility.” Stalin
said the same thing, only he

_ didn’t have to ask.

Jim Walden

TO HEIDE FOLEY:

What do pouty half-naked girls
have to do with cyberspace or the
new edge? Why does MONDO
2000 have to look like a Calvin
Klein ad? Please, more content

and less sex!

Sylvia Pastorelli
Berkeley, CA.

Um, Sylvia Darling, I suggest you pick up
a copy of MONDO 2000 and actually take
a look at it. Just which trench-coated (like
our #16 cover) Calvin Klein ads are you
referring to? As for pouty lips, I sincerely

Pm mC
10 TL CELT Te]

at fast the horizon ADDRArs free AGAUN {o us,
at last our ships may venture out agath, |

Five quarterly issues of MONDO 2000 for $24
NAME |

ADDRESS

CITY STATE. ZIP

TELEPHONE

L] TAM ENCLOSING A CHECK OR MONEY ORDER
[] 1AM SUBMITTING MY VISA/MC NUMBER—AND

THAT NUMBER IS: EXP DATE:

SIGNATURE
United States $24 e Canada/Mexico $27 US funds e International $50 US funds

venture out to face any danger; all the daring |

ledge ‘5 permitted again;

‘ive quarterly issues of MONDO 2000 for $24

SIGNATURE

United States $24 e¢ Canada/Mexico $27 US funds e International $50 US funds

Ree (AL 32a, Our sea, lies OPRh Agath; perhaps there has
never yet beer Such ah "Opeh sea.’ —friedrich Mietzsche

_ STATE - = -22iP

MY VISA/MC NUMBER—AND

EXP DATE:

e ico $ 7 US funds ¢ International $50 US funds

Introducing Jamshied Sharifi’
A Prayer For The Soul Of Layla (ALU-1005)

In this mesmerizing recording Jamshied Sharif
explores and expands on Middle Eastern musical
traditions, weaving exotic melodies, West African
rhythms, incandescent vocals and eclectic instru-
mentation into rich tapestries of emotion and
sound. This is music of extraordinary range and
power, at once voluptuous and deeply spiritual.
It is music of the heart and of the soul — a prayer

come to the exuberant sonic -landscane of
= Japanese composer and banjo player Akira Satake.
Featured artists include Johnny Cunningham,
Jerry O' Sullivan, Glen Velez and Steve Gorn.

“TA]n incredibly varied and complex cross-cultural feast for your ears... “TYjou have probably never heard anything quite like this music,
infectious as hell... it not just works, it rocks!” which is spare, haunting, melodic, and compelling... A wonderful CD,
Wind and Wire magazine well worth seeking out.”

The $ensible Sound

worthy of high praises... one of the best new releases of the year.”

ALUILA

AcE CC. 0° Ris

ALULA RECORDS P.O. Box 15867, Durham, NC 27704-0867 USA 1-800-9
Fax: 919-403-2451 e-mail: alula@aol.com Web: http://www.alula

... soul music for the next millennium.”

— Mickey Hart

ORE
ERNATIVE

tp order or for catalog, 800-966-3699;

to preview, 900-370-4500

Ganga Devis bijamudra, Mul Chowk, Patan © Kevin Bubriski.

advise you to stop thinking of a fictional film charactor
giving the birdie (re: reese pic) as a come-hither

signal... As for half naked, which winter clad mode
from our fashion spread did you absolutely distort in
your brainwashed cranium? If you managed to find some
cleavage in the Sarah McLachlan photos, I guess you
spent a bit too much time in the dark. Finally, instead of
erroneously accusing me of selling out, I think maybe it
is you who needs a little bit of sex, perhaps with some

half-naked pouty Calvin Kleiners. But good luck finding
them, they aren't in MONDO.

—Heide Foley, Art Director

HI, MY NAME IS YEVGENIY

Recently, | saw the issue of Mondo 2000. |
was so excited and fascinated that my poor
English can’t let me to describe all the
emotions | had. | am magazine-designer, for
[2 years, from Moscow (Russia) I’ve been in
New York for two years, and have collected
many professional magazines like PRINT,
HOW, COMMUNICATION ART. | have
always been ardent fan of extraordinary
design, and new solutions to design problems.
| thought that those catalogs were the future
of design. However, after | saw Mondo’s
Cybermania | was completely swept off my
feet. My blood was boiling and | was
salivating with thirst for more as | looked
through the first issue | accessed.

Truly Thankful,
Yevgeniy Serch

Join the Wide Awake Club. Submit rants, raves,
reviews, and other ramblings to our rough and
ready staff.

web: editor@mondo2000.com
fon: 510-559-2060

fax: 510-559-2062

mail: P.O. Box 10171
Berkeley, CA 94709

MONDO [48] 2000

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he come up with ¢ a le hybrid of Aen a bei ee
th-fueled post-rave bag with a bi- racial banter that ca ta Ww

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ENGUGHHA QUESTION OF TIME HAPPIEST GIRL* & MORE!

“OR A FREE CATALOG: HYPNOTIC

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COM/HYPNOTIC

Lost in the white noise din of the
millennium’s end is the tradition of

the troubadour, the creator of

cantos and weaver of magical
incantations. The troubadours

have gone back underground to Ce

their most potent magic, transforming

eluted MUM ciate eA Ce balla

of alchemical discovery, ete Howe |
lead voice of the Peete
Nds, is one of the eee

of this time-honored

tradition. His voice

speaks with insight on

the creation of art

without heart.

Goa teumec tom eset ac | ttt edmeecetsernneys
a boy pulling the wings off a fly... too often Electronica
enters my body with this type a Bot and makes me
Toto terh a oytatretamehmalccvasm ye) (ouetelel Stee for an
immediate sonic breath of spirit. :

There is a cure for the monotony of drum ‘n’ bass, for
the linear, frameless void of aimless ambiance; for the cut
and paste soul-lessness of “found sound” arrangements. It
was in the reverberant soul off the angelic voicings of Jeff
buckley erie Cas : oonings of ere Hiss

alt flight. If Electronica could move me so R ei be both
practitioner and disciple... But as this fashion stands now,
MEE eCasdoneamyyeconteomead cent enetece
print, the kabuki mask worn by a geisha who does not ae
SFA Rotate ents Ea This is the key to the whole
issue. Electronica is the ice queen, the Bond girl, the BMOC
of the alternative youth culture machine, at least at the -
moment, and as such it is the perfect STL taa eae
Warholian culture, due it’ f oc steratratri cone

mee SoCo oeecorreeccceesaceone Electr nica + load

- Seecrrecotitettiteg iiivere Cetiae an DE ee is

_- @ 2,
4

7 ceo CEI

Move me. | keep wai ae
VNU Cte aeymeccrelanylamenematicascosnt
genius of “sampledelia,” ieee
Seo fre i

me, a resounding NO. And while I will give the young man all
die corel Witcme (cao eco m sonar uCicoetbl acca tetra ana

talk of the work’s musical genius is at best uninformed. Call ie

thing what it is.

In naming what a thing is, we must see it in it’s entirety—
the entire Hippo, above and below the water—and much of
si etarentesBeKeonyserce Ream rays elce Keegan! mort tacae
deconstructionism. It takes it’s energy from being able to pick
Men orornieerceoincnlerr elcome BraccMo aris cr

oe eM weaver atecentt a — Te oo all ee

yeethefin such a EN that —_ pre the oo at ibaa
fulnéés and intent of the song sources that are their genesis? For

upon an act of aT Hon. ee epi ae a

I eteevrnteasHl erence lnneteem Cone Cnn aTIn Cocotte matt atoa Hie
GAN CvaComiemrsnie) ae cau cenoc CRG) otrmlaceccr tat
when he told The Wire one of his rly was to make music
that was divested of any of the energy of things labrnneese la
he was seeking in effect the creation of a milieu that was:
eosin) ihm oe emey terete me eclaclCecme Ne mt RCH Say
truth inherent in much of Electronica that spells its death
knell, because the only people you are going to lead for very

Oita with this particular carrot are the cool ones, the ones who
Bacallesestiae im Coyiterccasramriscistits4 Naan nea! king race bia

is wearing a glittering suit. |
The only viable future in Electronica is in ficton ecm erase

argued that many great Jazz musicians did their worst work — |
Pa tomeggitah tc cdcrerteansimoccccconc resto) ae
and R&B. The Bitches Brew vs. Kind of Blue debate will be
had by musicians and enthusiasts for years. However, much
Brande retcelel ete eycepnivicibarcast ema Ccmniete CHebaroKcouc Kea (clanxeyet(e
__ is what is being summoned on its outer fringes, artes Cee va
of craft and heart who are not afraid to include those Pinta bnnre cole

human elements of creation and oT OCneMCcnaela carte ye

ear tany: human experience. Musicians such as Talvin Sood at L | |
William Orbit, Bill Laswell, The Grassy Knoll, etc., all recognize

Taree) LAr Ae) Oona music that engages Tela just the
nd fashion sense, but the head and soul as a oe

nos a to me that the most cela ieascevst (as rele Cv ace _
have no great stake in preserving some sacred Ccitctecer(s |
| for Electronica, ~~ needy PST! ane Be ae _

| i" ruil into aa rhetoric ae |
3 he - hi Et Ao at See es

ele a sop a FY ns cee danse
- But craft is never spoken of. Lack of
er ee ere re of Pecans cue

: cop took Aa to varying pau aie a
because it was accepted that they were working in a musical —

Oat pee deisel Loynitesvnnbis ted ae Electronica

MULES (aC bUcMderLmcs Sum Con ercRciel nema NreLaditcate eae ofthese

arcane Oca) nists must eprelocetecccisnvenaicrimtetlaroedetem tciea(eyii(ommm
dinosaurs that used them in the 70’s and 80's.
n their course, and i in this failatiee Alene

rea fetes i

atceeiccKerccomn menace tracers cous inca cr cwsllcen cenit: Ea ae

mentary he dnd when the bored media seeks to endow the — .
Boca te gaye arelietds mark of FYOyOOCene Eacte) Peano |e

can cease to be inundated with the recycled psychedelic oe |
se is See Please, Se Choe acl :

moire EC I)

ZV TeVan CoM UE AC OmIV siete Macs CclesT acne a occ Ut aa

VES.

;

[coven nce cabot clecmepesversop eal lates Olecent Cadses an zaces-an bade one commen thing gory on a7 all dady |

VAN LB rita clas tate NH: They call him the Yogi-Christ of India. He is mentioned in Yogananda’s Autobiography
CTP CAUCE Loree recat et Ros nCeat mene Rcean Oat eattam yt

is the guru of the gurus. And the guy I'm talking about—they call him Babaji.
CO Ar duoe aoe eRe ACen Leo mr VAM ee eT ermal tect

Seem a eR eee ae tal ay afta A
his closest disciple. Babaji died on Valentine's Day in ‘84. I happened
., to be busy doing an album called Fearless. I hadn't met the incarnation
of Babaji. But I knew many stories about Babaji, and I experienced
the way of life he was teaching because I spent time at his
ashram in India. His teaching includes things like: we are all

. equal; all religions are equal; we have to learn to live together
_ in harmony—all the different tribes and races—and have

WORE am elma matt
NH: To recycle, burn old trash, to take care of what
you consume. Understanding the sacredness of all
things and having fun at the same time.

M2: He’s not a heavy guru then.
ie sR Came mnie Nr haem Conner
ome time with him, he can look directly
into your heart and knows what's going on
with you. So he acts as a mirror. If you
have emotional troubles with your.loved
one or with your life, he imprints on
_you. He can show you the real happy
life without your hang ups, and you
learn techniques and yoga forms
from those schools. Breathing
yoga... which is called re-birthing
in our language. It gets rid of
our old, horrible imprints
_ and sickness. |
ee elemo mya
eC DE velo evel
erred tetas (eye

wee ie

MONDO [47] 2000

It all began when I was about 12, when I was looking at all those Communist faces
around me, because I grew up in East Berlin. And they were very ee LsTes)|
Communists, like the fascists and the nationalists. They all said
there’s no God, so I thought I'd look. I grabbed the Bible and
kneeled down before an old wooden Madonna face. | went to . .
Poland and sat there in a church looking at Jesus up there. « .
A couple of years later, when I was 19, friends told me that .
things can happen if you take LSD. You can meet God or
Buddha. It was very difficult in the beginning.

M2: Were you looking for a guru?
NH: I was with two Polish people. It was like dying, but
I couldn't die. It was like a never-ending zone of pain.
So I cried for help, “I need a doctor; I’m dying!” And this
one Polish guy said he was going to give me a downer to
go off my trip. So I thought if I took te Oe Rivet emacs
to take LSD one day again because I really wanted to find.
God. So I didn’t take the pills. The pain came back and
then I cried out to God, “Please help me!” And things
started to get better, and I heard this sweet male voice saying
my name and “Nina, you're here and you have to die.”
My old self didn’t want to die. I cried out and the era
came back. And | remembered what he said, and I thoug!
s the way it goes; I have to surrender. I lay dow1
ee my eyes. | came out of my body and saw colo
hospital scene with cut off amputated pieces and parts
And a nurse calling my name and Saas my cheek,
suysteca em eenttca nals ‘back J lite. But I said, “I’m not go’
I ae so much better now.” And I heard this voice ag,
my eyes. And I opened them and he said “Turn aro
Selatan vibrating, the picture. And he looke
much love. He was ern long hair like Jesu:
atc etme lnm omuen- Ne har tern hn ve PU attemeye|
said, “I’m always es ei always be there.
stone fell off my heart and | relaxed. | asked he
there, and he said, “You took LSD, so I must
I asked his name and he shook his head. And }
Wal lb etem nto TeRceN a Tirca stam Oued TET esc elas
kind of a mischmasch, but I could hear, “Only H
“Muusch, muusch.” So I thought his name was
lofcrecteonatelace- VG Raat Cem ite. one soem yous Rhee utes
of people calling him. So I crawled on his lap all night, and —
Pee eier eel would be really dying. And that there —
were four possibilities when you die. Et he erecue certs i.
tunnels on the wall. I asked him “which one to eee) ened ne
and he said “I can’t help” and that you be en eee)
where you belong. I wanted to know which one to take to go
to him. I felt like he was my boyfriend. And I’ve felt like Tae
ever since. And when I ran into a poster in ‘87 of Babaji, | thought,
“My trip, is it you?” My now girl triend Trudi, who knew him
COME Bee Cet Teen thought “Tt’s the Lord of the —
Sun...He’s the Sun God.” And we ees ee two days ago the —
George Harrison version of “My Sweet Lord.” It’s for my Beato
Luca's project, but I'm going to throw it on my album too. |

eee
‘ oS ‘and

i ne}

APA WE Cee Rite em oe ad

NH: Luca is a disco star in Australia. He travels from disco to disco. And
spreads the names of the Lord through his dance hall music. He just
came from Bangkok with crowns he wanted me to wear, but my daughter
looks better in them.

M2: How old is your daughter? [Cosma Shiva]

MONDO [4

>
Going to the comics shop, a few doors down from Moby

Dick’s on the corner of Hennepin and Seventh, was about

as good as it got when | was fourteen. These weren’t
the comics your parent’s read. They were gritty, violent
and smart. The industry was being stood on its head by
hot new talent and none was hotter, grittier or more
talented than Frank Miller. Through his work | grew to
appreciate the squalid dankness of Moby Dick’s, or
at least find the derelict bar newly fascinating.
Miller transformed every character he touched.
He resurrected Batman and turned an
unknown blind hero into the hottest title
in the industry. He’s now having the time
of his life doing Sin Gty for Dark Horse
Comics. It’s some of his best work to date.

Mischa Beitz: How did you get your start in
comic books?

Frank Miller: It’s the only thing I ever wanted
to do. My mother tells me I declared to her
that I was going to become a comic book
artist when I was six years old. By
then I was already starting to draw
my own. When I was able to—in
other words when I was out
of that prison that we call
High School—I moved to
Manhattan and essentially
made a nuisance of
myself. Neal Adams, the

artist, was of particular

help to me: giving me | i wi
advice and doing his best i

to discourage the young

fool, but a very generous
man. I just kept banging on
people’s doors and hanging

out in lobbies until I was
able to get work.

NO NEED.
TO PLAY
IT QUIET.

NOT
ANYMORE.

monpo [46] Tt

M2: Persistence paid off.

FM: Oh yes. Especially then because it was
considered a dying field. Many of the first
editors I worked with just shook their heads
at me and said, “We all know we're going to
be out of business in five years. What are
you doing?” Of course, I showed up with
completely the wrong material. | showed up
with all these crime comics I'd drawn and I
was somehow arrogant enough to think they
were going to start publishing that sort of thing.
M2: You're certainly doing it now.

FM: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I’m having an
absolute ball.

M2: The crime story is something you've
incorporated in a lot of your work. You
managed to incorporate a lot of it in
Daredevil.

FM: Yeah, that was ‘78 or ‘79. Beyond
my life-long love of crime stories I had also
rather recently discovered Will Eisner’s
Spirit. My Daredevil work was obviously
grabbing all it could from Will Eisner and
applying it to the basic vernacular Marvel
Comics.

M2: Daredevil was your first big break at
Marvel.

FM: Yeah. Before Daredevil I'd been doing
single stories here and there for every pub-
lisher there was. I did Weird War Tales for
DC Comics and Twilight Zone for Gold Key
Comics, all kinds of odd pieces. Then I got
the break of doing a couple of fill-in issues
tor Spider Man featuring Daredevil as guest
star and started lobbying very hard to get
the job on Daredevil.

M2: So you really fell in love with the
character?

FM: I thought Daredevil was the most vul-
nerable character they had. Usually when
you ask about a super hero people tell you,
“well, he can fly, he’s very strong.” With

LER

Artwork by Frank Miller. '™ Sin City and © Frank Miller Inc.

Daredevil, you'd have to say, “he’s blind”
and I thought I could do a lot with that;
make him a Spirit-like crime fighter.

M2: So you had the idea of doing a
Spirit-like character when you began
lobbying for Daredevil.

FM: Oh yeah, Daredevil was less tied up
than other super heroes; much less popular.
At the time, they made comic books that
didn’t sell bi-monthly and when I got the
title it was selling poorly enough to only be
published every two months; which was
also convenient for me, because I couldn’t
do more than that at the time. It’s a standing
rule: if you're going to come in on all these
old comics, the smartest thing is to pick the
biggest loser. It was the same with Batman.
Batman was actually selling quite poorly
when I did Dark Knight.

M2: You wrote the script for RoboCop II,
how did you get involved in that?

FM: The phone rang. It was really as simple
as that. The producer called me up and asked
me if I wanted to write it. [ hadn’t really
planned on working in the movies. It always
intrigued me but I didn’t have any particular
ambition for it. It also hit at a time when I
was in a real creative lull. I guess I got too
much attention after Dark Night. Got a little
full of myself. From what I gathered, Dark
Knight had influenced the first movie a great
deal and they needed a script for the second.

monpbo [4.7] 2000

M2: There were many ‘Milleresque’ themes in the movie,
there was one scene using medical equipment as torture
devices...

FM: [laughing] Yeah, one of my favorites.

M2: You've been very outspoken about censorship in both
comics and movies...

FM: I don’t really think you can comfortably use the word
censorship in relation to Hollywood. They surrendered the first
amendment years ago by adopting a rating system. Like
television, when they say first amendment they’re closing
the barn door way too late.
M2: Do you think it’s
possible for Hollywood
to produce

‘4 ~
ony i
ay,

s a)
“he

@
ae LY
Ln Ta
. ere pm

«
.g0eng

you'd like to
write?

FM: They'd be
producible, but I don’t know if the current system—with
so many hands on every project, with everything costing so
much and aiming at such a wide audience—I don’t know if
it’s a real good route to take. Also, I never regarded writing
movies as a step up. I've always loved comics the most, and
I’m quite happy doing what I'm doing.

M2: Any thoughts on a rating system for comic books?

FM: Over my dead body—I'Il fight it tooth and nail as many
times as I have to.

M2: It’s interesting that TV seems to have succumbed.

FM: And you'll notice that even when the censors got what
they wanted, they kept complaining—even more loudly.
That’s what happens and that’s why no concession makes any
sense. You don’t use red meat as shark repellent. They never
seem to learn. Every few years there’s talk of a rating system
in comic books and we've got to bang that drum again.

M2: What do you think of the translation from comic book
to film? Do you think it works?

FM: No... There are a few moments that are kind of nice;
some moments in the first Superman movie, for instance,
that really did celebrate the folk hero. But I think in general
the movies based on comic books are pretty good proof they
don’t translate.

M2: Yeah, I keep expecting great things and end up being
terribly disappointed. What about the Batman movie? Did
Tim Burton bother to talk to you about it?
FM: No. Asa matter of fact, my own reaction to what I've seen
of the Batman movies is that they’ve got nothing to do with
comic books. They're adapted from the old TV show. You
know, the slumming stars showing up as villains; they're like the
Batman TV show without the humor. The Batman movies have
much more in common with The Brady Bunch, The Beverly
Hillbillies and the Star Trek movies. They're clearly TV
derived. It’s delusional for people to think that these
films are in any way related to the original comics.
M2: Especially after the Dark Knight where
MO ABO M Aa m Oma crla (sitad mcm mat
Wear rae CLNen eel naenilo nel ile
the most guilty and culpable character in some respects. _

FM: Well, I went for the Wagnerian.

WON Uocm ne CeiCititt em commit) hele timate tan elas b Ce
NU WY |
FM: Well the super hero started as an outlaw and at one point
they all got deputized; about the same time that the comic book
industry got castrated in the 1950s. The super heroes reflected
that. Superman in his earliest s
rather mysterious figure ai reer ace
© Warring generals are carrying ona
are dying on either side. It’s horrible.
moat generals, drops them in front
n to sit and sort it out and then leaves. He
hority figure and with Batman it isn’t much
out that he’s a guy that dresses up like a bat
people through windows.
: Any idea what led to the creation of the super heroes of
the 1930's. | :
FM: Ihave my own theories. Obviously y

think there’s a relatio
characters o

WSs iceelaice one
il; you couldn’t judge them ©
EBC e metalic
was an ancient interview, right? It must have
was doing Dark Knight because | sounded a lot like
® ack then. In Dark Knight I was creating a larger than life
igure and treating it very seriously. A larger than life figure
would be very hard for us to figure out and might even be

EPL

capricious. [ think people running around t
characters should be role models ought to sit
The Odyssey.
MOA Oracle m Ce ouCBele rman lee
look back and say, “my greatest work was Da
FM: If I did that, I’d have to retire. No. Tom
along the way. With each project, I end up wit
weapons in my arsenal, a few more things I ca
more ideas about where to go next. I don’t kn
done the Sin City work if | hadn’t done the pre
M2: Any thoughts on Marvel’s chapter 11?
FM: Oh, I think this has been coming down th
Mum cmrlcta cre once nner ents
Jack Kirby and Stan Lee could only be milked
steadily alienated the better talent.
The prevailing attitude had always been th
were all that mattered and the talent was com

Tit miele

changeable. Even when that was plainly not t
had to hold to the theory and it was really onl
PO CHMCM MTOR OMe ReoTmary
in the early 1960's. That's thirty years ago.
oa Bree cemeereniey- veya iVetieme Com bcm reac.

was part of one of them. But it was quite
and it was still essentially the same group of peop |
the book. You know, Stan Lee was still around and oe Net
an infusion of a lot of us kids who had grown up on Marvel
comics wanting to do them and getting a chance. The characters
were good and they were bound to have another surge or two.
It was just... how far can you go with much of anything?
There are only two American super heroes who are folk heroes.
There’s only Superman and Batman. Everything else is a distant

Ca) si the way with Superman nd eee

FM: I don’t know if they'll lead the way. Traditionally they’re not
leaders, but they are doing some very wise things that constitute
a real investment in the future. They’re diversifying their line
wildly. They're publishing things I don’t think anyone would
have dreamed they'd have published ten years ago. They have
the big Warner behind them so I suspect they have more freedom
to maneuver than other publishers.

I don’t think anybody is really going to lead the way. I think
it’s going to be a time when no single publisher is going to domi¢
WLM MB Cum Restut) Giet pee) Rms iC peel crave bite2
You've got to understand, when you go toa aS
say, 'l only buy Berkeley books."

M2: The number of small publi

ae euy named Bill Sul

FM: No, I don’t think so. I don’t know if I have the er I

a g out books is
tremendous. There appears to be CR aCe AI aT
yen (em AU Ca Ce
FM: Well, I can say where Loy
and more individualwoices out ther
doing the kind of work they want to

on d

turning out wr sery dN MCHCUE

the publishers would distribu

NRE Tice aeRO Meera RST aeTite oltre epee) tc) tats
came along who didn’t have as many bad habits.

M2: At one point it seemed you were interested in writing a
book on the subject. You felt it was a very important time in
the industry and that somebody ought to sit and write it all
down. Will you write a book on this?

keep wanting to draw it [laughs] I’m not much of a scholar, but I'll

certainly help anybody who intends to do a history. I think it’s one

of those, "somebody really ought to." I’m not the guy, one look at

my studio and you'd understand. [laughs] I’m not very organized.

M2: Any projects beyond Sin City at this point? Is there

PUiNAaiveiream Can eseieLeD Tim TMG ICM ro au motte Ce

FM: There is, I try not to talk about stuff until it’s pretty far

along. Believe it or not I've got a historical piece. I’m like a kid

in a candy store, there's no end to the possibilities.

M2: I just read William Gibson’s new book, Idoru. Are you.

familiar with his work?

FM: I haven't read this one.

M2: maa that Has a big role is a nano-technology
parts of cities. I remember reading ©

1 and the Aquarius Project.

‘to yours. Have you

ir Oy err

FM: I never have, but I’d look forward to the opportunity. It’s a
weird time for fiction in general. | think there’s a lot of synthesis
and searching going on. People are combining things in unusual
ways, and Gibson’s a good example.

M2: Do you know what it is that distinguishes this work?

FM: I suppose it’s the audience. They’re restless enough now to
take a chance.

M2: Which is good for you.

FM: Yeah! It’s a great time to be in this field. It’s funny, the only

thing that ever makes the headlines is this news about Marvel

Comics filing for bankruptcy, or whatever, so people think we're

in some kind of dead field. They don’t realize how alive it is.

There's nothing like working in a field that’s just been laid clean.

M2: When I first saw your Martha Washington series it

reminded me a lot of Howard Chaykin’s work; particularly

American Flag.

FM: Well, Chaykin and I shared studio space for a couple of

years, | remember when he started doing American Flag—it was

very exciting to see the ideas fly as wildly as that and it was quite

liberating for me. He brings an amazing number of influences to

comics that people haven’t seen before.

M2: You've been writing crime stories your whole career, have

they always had the noir twist?

FM: Oh yeah, I grew up reading things like Raymond Chandler

and Mickey Spillane. Still do as a matter of fact.

M2: Have you read all their works?

FM: Oh yeah—several times each. There’s also Hammet and a

host of others that aren’t as well known. There's

Chester Himes and Jim Thompson... there’s an 4 ox.

awful lot of great crime fiction to read.

M2: Are there any new authors you're

reading?

FM: Well I really enjoy Carl Hiaasen. %G

Unfortunately he’s most known for VA)

writing the novel from which the WA 9

movie Striptease was based. But that ag. ©
ves

we.

really didn’t capture his writing at all.
He's remarkably witty and a vicious ——~.
writer. And there’s Charles ;
Willetord. Now Willeford’s stuff is
old... he’s dead, but as far as what’s og @
going on right now I'm not really
up to spark yet.

I've read a little James Ellroy
and want to read more but he
takes some doing. I simply have to
take enough time off to immerse myself in his
work. Stylistically he’s a shock. When he gets stac-
cato I've never seen anything like it. I also enjoy
Andrew Vachss’ work. His stuff is barely fiction. He’s
on a much more realistic end of things. His characters

ct
ae.

nee

are clearly fictional but his stuff has the ring of reality. I mean,
it’s utterly unromanticized. With Sin City you're dealing with
a subject that’s highly romanticized.

M2: i I was going through the Sin City covers, I couldn’t
help but notice that your title’s are like censor bait: Sex
and Violence, That Yellow Bastard, etc. It's like waving a
red flag!

We’‘re dumbing the entire country
because we’re afraid an 18-month-

FM: [laughing] We'll see, that’s always been part of the genre.
There’s an old Jim Thompson novel called That Swell Looking Babe.
Sin City is meant to hit hard on a visceral level. When I come
up with a title as good as That Yellow Bastard, there’s no way
I'm going to say “oh, this is going to get me in trouble.” |
mean, trouble is my business. | suppose one of the things I
respond to these days is that we’re living in such tender times.
Everybody is oh so careful not to offend oh anyone and everybody's
always concerned about kids all the time. We're dumbing the
entire country down to the level of an 18-month-old, because
we're afraid an 18-month-old might have a bad afternoon. I
guess I respond to this overly tender approach by wanting to
be a bit outrageous.

M2: Comic books have changed dramatically in the last
thirty years.

FM: Yeah, they’ve been getting back where I
think they ought to be. If you look at cable TV
now, some of it’s most outrageous material
is adapted from old comic books.

onc Sa

show called
Perversions of Science
which is based on the old EC
Science Fiction comics. Up until the
self censorship of the 1950’s, comics were
not considered an exclusively children’s medium
at all. In fact, it had established what I thought was
a really worthwhile beach-head as being a bit outlaw.
You know, if you want the homogeneous stuff you
can go to network television or even Hollywood
movies, but with comic books, because the over-
head is lower and because it takes so few hands to
make one, you can really get some different points
of view. I guess part of what I like is that they can
provoke. I've got a new title coming out next month

50] 2000

called Tales to Offend; as in Tales from the Crypt. It’s formatted different shapes and images of different sizes have different meanings.

very much like an old DC comic. The biggest enemy any cartoonist has is time because unlike a film
M2: Is this a Sin City title? maker or even a prose writer, the reader is in total control of time.
FM: No, this is it’s own thing. It does have one Sin City story Technically it only takes a few seconds to read a comic book page
and it has two stories featuring a hero named Lance Blastoff unless there are too many words on it. You have to keep the words
who teaches children not to recycle, to eat plenty of meatand — ata minimum to be true to the form. For instance, I find you can
to smoke. make the reader pause and take a breath by using a single-page
M2: No relation to Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear? tableau. Why? Because they’re being hit with a single forceful
FM: I came up with the idea as a parody of the Sterling Buck image rather than one that is asking you to move forward. That's
Rogers type. Lance Blastoff as far as I know is the only super the real stuff, the joy of my craft: finding ways to

hero who has a hip flask. TTS communicate things that take a single
M2: Concealed as a laser gun? ae , : moment. Things that perhaps, at the
FM: [laughing] No, it’s just plainly a flask. start of my career I might have done
M2: One of the things that has changed since the ona third of a page I'll now give ten
30’s is the way comic books are laid out. Reading pages, in order to really squeeze
panels sequentially from upper left-hand corner to every ounce of value out of it.

lower right-hand corner has changed radically and you M2: Do you spend much time
were a big part of that process. trying different layouts and
FM: The music comparison is inevitable. You can go thinking “this moment
from Bach to Jazz and see certain structures seemingly 4 needs to be bigger”?
fall apart when actually new structures are forming. I | FM: Oh yes, all the
think a fair number of my colleagues and I have yy | m® time. That's what |
wanting to shove things around an see what . enjoy most. As

happens. As far back as the 40’s Will Eisner much as I enjoy the

was shaking things up. Though he generally craft of drawing—
stuck more or less to three tier, he there really isn’t a
played with ita lot. Hehad things 4 part of this job I
run vertically up and down | don’t like except

and then later Jack Kirby ; . ae o/ Naw maybe ruling panel
just made the pages oe oe ae borders, like boring—I
explode. All of a sudden a work with a thick marker
single image would be two pages on vellum just doing a
wide. It’s an on-going process and I think the series of rough picture ideas
more that’s attempted the more can be discovered. and I’ll work out an entire

M2: I think narrative techniques have become sequence. Perhaps I'll use one in ten

vastly more complex. If I Wy of the roughs that I prepared. I tend to do
y that very fast though—it’s where I feel like

showed a contemporary

comic book to my mother I’m conjuring or something, just throwing

I don’t think she’d stuff at the page. Then I'll find a way to
know how to read it. approach something that I haven't seen before,
FM: Well, that can and it all becomes very simple. I’m probably
happen. I work very -s\ \ being incoherent now.

hard to make my stuff as readable 2 M2: No, not at all. The representation of time
as possible, but it’s a form in the comic book is fascinating. It’s visual
that one has to learn. If and in many ways closer to the raw stuff
people are only used to of consciousness than any other

the four panel newspaper medium. The symbolic immediacy
strip they're going to be of comic books is something that
in for some shocks. As other media can’t touch. I’m thinking
you play with it, you discover that particularly of film.

FM: Film is just so damn literal. For one thing you use real
people. It’s much more powerful than comics, there’s no
competition there, but a comic can crawl inside your head better.
I mean, a movie may shock but it will rarely stick with you for a
long time. A comic, even a little Calvin & Hobbes strip, can be
Sorc OEM Brsronllsm com Mere CE oerviemstelacm iy ocen dae
form is much more the brother of prose than it is of film. I think
comics have much more in common with prose. They really
work on the deepest level, because they work much more inside
your head. The drawings themselves can be illustrative and
ornate but they need not be, because the reader is doing a
tremendous amount of image making. Not just finishing the
pictures in front of them but filling in all those little white
gutters between moments. That's the beauty of the form, but
it’s also part of what makes it very hard to practice. You're
constantly playing a dangerous game with your reader. You
know, will this connect, will it hit them on the right level and
does it still make sense.

finding ways to

M2: It seems there’s a process of interpretation and communi-
PECAN ECM aa CR Eee ume
rat bT PRIYA Um ey RUT eCOLE (emacs wl oer

FM: I guess the thing I find so wonderful about comic form is
that you're really in a situation of communicating with one
person, but it’s also a visual experience. So the author is getting
across the intimacies of something they wrote but it’s amplitied
by the fact that you’re seeing reality interpreted by that person.
Getting back to the Calvin & Hobbes example, I hope that Watterson
continues not to let anyone touch that. I don’t ever want to see
some little actor try to be Calvin. Calvin is that scribble.

M2: A very elegant scribble.

FM: Beautiful, beautiful work. I really think he’s the premier
strip practitioner. I find his stuff remarkable; it’s such wonderful
eye candy and it charms constantly.

M2: My aesthetic was profoundly influenced by the artwork
you and people like Bill Sienkiewicz produced. pr =
will be with me forever.

FM: [laughing] That's kind of fun. I look at the comics I grew
up on, they were obviously about ten years before the ones
you did, and they were like Jack Kirby comics. Since then I’ve
researched the history of comics and I’ve got shelves of them;
a whole history. The period from the 40’s to the 50’s is actually
the peak of the craft. Unless you count Kirby in which case
you've got to say the whole thing. He just kept recurring and
eae ltesCOUVAnm aaa asisbites

M2: When did you discover Manga?

FM: I was first exposed to Manga by friends in my early
twenties and I was just knocked flat on my back. It
was a completely different interpretation of comic
books and such a liberating one. Unfortunately, I

saw the best first. I saw Kojima’s artwork on Lonewolf
and Cub.

M2: The stories themselves are just gorgeous, there’s
something about that writing.

FM: One of the things I was really struck by

was the absolutely different sense of time. Things
were allowed to breathe fully, whereas in the
traditional American comic book the story is

just dripping off the pages; so many incidents
per page. I’m talking about the traditional
American comic book most people think of, with
six panels per page and each panel has a shot of
Superman pulling the earth on a chain or some-

thing. [laughs] A lot of what I’ve been trying to do with Sin City
is play the American pace against the Japanese, so that every once
in a while it speeds up and you get a lot of little panels with an
awful lot happening. Then some little event will take four pages
that would actually take place in a second. In the last Sin City I
finished—Sin City: Family Values—there’s a scene where a man is
hit by a car; I gave it six pages before he even hit the ground. He
just tumbled through the air.

M2: Manga must have been a big influence in doing Ronin?

FM: I think that was really where it was the most immediate
and obvious influence, because | was trying to draw like Kojima
in the Samurai sequences. I think it’s Sin City where | actually
internalized more of what really makes Manga work. With
Ronin I was an extremely excited fellow who had discovered
Jean Giraud and Goseki Kojima in the same year and wanted to
imitate both at the same time.

M2: How do the two traditions compare?

FM: Both cultures have a tremendous visual history and they
were taking very different directions. In Japan comics are a

| mass medium. In American they only sell briefly and don’t

belong in the mass media.

M2: In Japan you see businessmen on the bullet train...

FM: Reading fishing comics [laughs]... It’s a different history.
We really went off the rails in the early 50’s. The juvenile

Monte 152] 2000

delinquency threat at the time—which was about as real as the current,
deadly threat that’s resulted in having seventeen letters before a TV
show—created a scare in the industry. Even when the U.S.
i) Senate vindicated comic books, the comic book industry
took it upon itself to do something about William
Gaines’ Company, EC comics—which did Tales from the
Crypt, the Crime Comics, Mad Comics etc. Gaines was
outselling the rest of the publishers and they essentially
conspired to shut him down. That's the whole rea-
son there was a comics code for all those years...
so that it would prohibit exactly the titles Gaines published.
M2: That little shield in the corner of all those comic
books...
FM: It’s a badge of shame ... yeah. They shut down
) the best comic publisher in history. But you know,
| ‘*\ William Gaines was a very smart fellow. He took little
cae ‘*) Mad Comics, turned it into a magazine and did rather
well for himself. |

M2: I’ve enjoyed hearing your thoughts on the medium.

FM: I’m always afraid of being incoherent when I start talking about
that end of it. I mean, so much of my mind is spent there that I’m afraid
I come back sounding like I’m speaking in tongues or something.

WOO CR Meer Cmcet eee CR CCRC Kena aie watanl
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FM: I think one of the reasons I found myself so entranced with the
Japanese stuff is because as I studied it more, I studied the Japanese
more. When I was there for a few weeks I came to realize how
iconographic a culture they are. Of their two written languages, one
of them is pictographic. The pictographs are kind of hard for us to
sort out because they’ve become so stylized over time, but to me that
was a real clue that there’s a common ancestor to both the word and
the picture. In a lot of ways comics are an attempt to bring the two
back together. So when people ask whether I like to write or draw ©
better, on some days I'll say I like to draw better, it’s more physical,
but most days it’s like the two are really one thing.

M2: It seems like an unfair question. If you preferred one or the
SS ERICA ROCA m meme Ce mCCORuo ite

books.

FM: Yeah. I’m not a novelist and I’m not an illustrator. I’d probably
fail at either. So I’m glad I’ve got comic books.

M2: Thank God for comic books.
FM: [laughing] I’ve spent a lot of my life saying that. [jz

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PART 1:

Oliver Stone: Hi Stephen. I’m sorry for the
delay but it’s been a really crazy day. It's all
Stanley Kubrick’s fault.

Stephen Beck: Now what did he do to you?
OS: He’s been taking Tom Cruise for almost
a year to make a movie. [laughs] I just had
a meeting with Tom and it went on and on,
we had so much to discuss.

SB: Rumor has it that Tom was really upset
because Kubrick made him do 48 jillion
takes of one scene.

OS: I don’t know. I didn’t talk about the
gory details but he is very happy with the
movie and with Stanley. These are tough
questions you sent me!

SB: Tough questions, easy answers.

OS: Well, obviously there are too many
questions, and your pieces are kind of short
and punchy, aren't they?

SB: Yes, but you know how it is. You have
to get a lot of ore to find a few nuggets.

OS: Well, maybe I can find five nuggets.

SB: I’m hoping to get some insights into
your creative process.

OS: Getting inside my creative process is
going to be tough.

SB: I’m reminded of the comment by the
non-objective painter Wassily Kandinsky
in his book On the Spiritual in Art. He
wrote about the “inner necessity” which
drives artists to create, to overcome the
inertia of material and themselves to create
the final work.

OS: Is this an interpretive piece or a Q and A?
SB: Yes—I want to let you talk and then
we'll edit the piece. I’m recording our
conversation and once I've transcribed and
edited the piece, I'll submit it to you for
checking any quotes for accuracy.

OS: Run the quotes by me? Very good.

Then you write a little prologue for the piece?
SB: Yes, I sent a draft intro down for
your review.

OS: It was quite nice. It motivated me to do
this interview.

SB: Your recent appearance at the U.C.
Berkeley Journalism Symposium with a
panel of academic and documentary
filmmakers discussed the topic of fact and
fiction, truth and reality in filmmaking...
OS: Were you at the Berkeley symposium?
They seemed to cut it off a bit early, just as
the academics were warming up.

SB: If this had been Berkeley of the 60's
we would have all been there talking until
2 o'clock in the morning.

OS: I agree. I think the panel was a little
rushed, and many of the conclusions could
have been developed more. Did you enjoy
the show?

SB: Yes I did, and I was curious why you
came up to Berkeley, into an academic
forum, so to speak.

OS: Orville Schell, the Dean, is a friend of
my former partner Janet Yang. He had
asked me to help him out about a year ago
so I said I would come up there one day. I
like Berkeley, I respect Berkeley.

Did you hear about the commencement
speech I gave there a couple years ago? It
was a big forum with thousands of students
and families, a big party on the grounds, and
all these incredible coeds running around.
SB: There are beautiful women all over
Berkeley.

OS: Id never been to Berkeley in my life and
there I was invited up to give a commencement
speech. It was pretty heavy. I told a terrible
Chinese joke at the start of the speech. I was
just trying to be funny and it went over
backwards, and the audience hissed me, so
I had to overcome that to make the speech.
SB: I missed that little incident.

OS: The Chinese joke was very funny, and
Chancellor Tien talks kind of funny, if

you ve ever heard him. I was just trying to
imitate his voice, to re-introduce myself
because he had made some mistakes about
facts in my life when he introduced me. But
I didn’t realize that 85% of the crowd was
probably Asian. So in trying to do a stupid
accent imitation of him I pissed them off. It
was so funny. I’m sorry.

SB: What do you know about Asian humor?
OS: Well Chinese-born are much different
to me from American-born and raised.
There’s more political sensitivity here as
opposed to a little more earthy, a little
broader acceptance of humor there, which I
associate with China.

SB: Is that one of the things which attracted
you to Asia in the first place?

OS: You're asking me about 43 questions in
a second here, and its hard to answer them
in a nanosecond.

SB: Well, OK, let me slow them down.

OS: I can give you code words, code words.
Yeah, Asia, it’s always been there. Since
1965 on it’s been in my life somewhere, but
I never expected it to grow so important and
be a part of my life.

I have an assistant who is Asian, and a
Korean woman is the mother of one of my

MONDO [5 6] 2000

children. My recent business partner Janet
Yang is Asian, and I have been involved
with various businesses in China. I've lost
a lot of money in China—actually that one
I never told anyone before. [laughs] I lost
some dough in China. | invested in a place.
A lot of dough, a lot of money, a lot of my
savings, after taxes you know. I was paying
a large tax rate. I sunk a lot of savings over
there, believing in future dreams. This was
3 or 4 years ago. And I’ve lost it all. Haven’t
seen a dime of it.

SB: Do you think Asian culture is going
to take over Western culture?

OS: Talk to me! I need to see your eyes. |
don’t know if you’re registering this. I don’t
even know if you are empathetic to my story.
For all I know you are laughing at me and
you re going to tear me apart.

SB: Well, I’m not here to take you apart.
I’m empathetic to your story. I want to try
to coax some interesting ideas from you.
OS: A lot of people write negatively
about me.

SB: I’m not a negative person. I’ve lost a
lot of money in ventures too, but I’m still
an optimist.

OS: I just don’t know. I’ve been fairly honest.
When I talk in public forums I try to be
honest, I expose myself and put myself in a
position where I could get hurt. And some
people have mis-used that and hurt me.
What can I say? I guess it’s the price of
traffic, right? Your toll ticket... but it can
really be painful sometimes.

SB: The sensitivity of an artist is like a raw
nerved exposed. When you bare your soul
in your work and then you stick around to
hear about it, it’s not always constructive
or positive.

OS: The ultimate inequity is you put so
much energy in over the course of making
a film, a year or more of pure energy, it’s
all your best, the best of yourself, you've
poured it into something. You never get
that molecular response in the Universe,
karmically you will never have an equivalent
to it, electron-wise, energy-wise, quantum-
wise, nothing.

So how can you do it? Even the
applause would seem thin, if it were
applause. And the damning would seem
damning, the damning, the damning!
Damned in Paradise! That was a great
title for John Barrymore’s life. [a book by
Gene Fowler—eds.] ...It gets worse as you
get older.

SB: I was hoping it got better.

OS: It gets worse in the sense that you're
wiser, and you know more, you've had
more experience. Asa result you distrust
having a new experience because you don’t
want to get hurt again. You get more wary.

Often a critic will say something, and I
know he’s not really serious, because if he
really thought about what he was saying, he
wouldn't really believe it. That's my feeling.
SB: What of your comments in the epilogue
to your new book? You say that you are
now trying to plant the seeds of joy. I
thought that was very beautiful.

OS: Wait ‘til you read my book. If you
call St. Martin’s Press you can get it this
weekend. [ really want you to read it.
Try to read it before Monday. It'll be a
whole other conversation.

Publishing is another world—it’s like a
19th century movement. Herman Melville
and Typee. Trying to move 10,000 copies is
a major effort. They published 50,000 copies
hardcover of my book A Child's Night Dream

which is very amazing for this kind of material.

You'll see.

SB: Readers would be fascinated with a
work from your early life.

OS: But I modified it through the older
framework so to me it’s acceptable now.
They're saying things that embarrass me in
there, and I’m a little bit ashamed, but you
know I feel like, yeah, that’s the way I was,
that’s the way I behaved. I really feel like I’m
embarrassed by it, but at the same time I say,
well, not really. It was you and that’s the way
you were. That's the way you really thought.
Well, you were a little sick in some ways.

I accept sickness because it was part of a
process. I'm trying to make the book, make
my past life work for me. That’s why I’m
going back to your quote from Kandinsky.
That’s where your energy comes from, a
certain narcissism, and a certain absorption
with your own self energy because you're
using that energy to explode outward. Like
meteors, like meteors going out.

The thing that destroys the creative man
the most is criticism. Criticism breeds self-
doubt ultimately, or too much of it, constantly,
as a given. Then you will automatically
doubt yourself. It does you no good at all.
You need to keep that energy clean and
pure. And where does it come from? It comes
from the darkest deepest most fertile spot of

hen you arrive to replace me, be awfully sure the plastic robot is sapient, cold, pedantic, and if possible a coward.

the self—the mushroom. It’s a mushroom, it
grows in the dark I guess.

And what happens is you've got to get
it out and trust it. That's all you have to do.
You have your blind self, it’s an instinct, and
if you lose the instinct I believe you shit, I
really do. Because I have been in both
positions, both places. I took both forks.

SB: It's bad enough when the critics nail
you, but when you know it’s bogus...

OS: Why do we have so many spear throwers
in our culture? Why is there so much negativity?
Why do we have so many commentators that
have to say something awful about somebody?
Percentage-wise, if you look at all the columns
written all across the United States in every
magazine, newspaper or Internet, bet you
most of the juicy ones are negative.

SB: Is it the mechanism of the market or is
it human nature?

OS: It’s true for me. Asa kid, when you
study the classics, you study about human
foibles and greed and desire, you read all
that stuff from an academic point of view.
But little did I realize then what I realize
now, and that’s how much I under estimated
the power of jealousy and envy in human
life. Never got it until the past ten years!
It’s another book. That's what all these
negative emotions derive from.

SB: Does it derive from the underlying
puritanism of American culture?

OS: I think we blame ourselves from the
day we are born. Le Ly Hayslip said that to
me in her book, from which I made Heaven
and Earth. Redemption and the ability to
forgive. She forgives those who hurt her,
and that’s not a character you see very often
in movies. Most characters get even and
they go after somebody. In this case it’s
spooky because we automatically assume
the negativity in this culture.

Only if you've been outside this culture...
I've had the good fortune that my mother
was French and I was able to spend time in
Europe and later in Asia. It’s a much softer
clime in Asia, more forgiving between people.

In any strong Buddhist society, like
Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Viet
Nam, parts of China, you would find a
kindness that exists between everyday
ordinary people that is really the engine
of society. It’s the beauty of having a
society really.

SB: The formality of politeness?

MONDO [57] 2000

OS: There’s a formality, but at the same time
there’s a hidden part, things are not always
out in the open. You're not on the Montel
Williams show talking about your emotions,
or your need for therapy—how you were
psychologically abused—and so forth.
There’s a lot of concentration on abuse in our
society. You read about the father who beats
up the child, or vice versa, but you don’t
know about the successful ones, how many
fathers are doing a good job? A lot of them.
SB: Where are the heroes today?
OS: I think it goes beyond that. The heroes
are in everyday life—everywhere. You have
to be blind to not see it, but most people are.
There are teachers, nurses, doctors, they’re
doing their job everyday making crucial
decisions, people who are on the front line.
It's going on all the time but we don't see it.
School for example, seems like a war
zone in movies because it’s more dramatic.
And that’s the falsification of the movies
because they tend to exaggerate the problem
for dramatic purposes. You can accuse me
of such in Natural Born Killers, but | didn’t
feel that anyone had addressed that issue
in the same way until then.
SB: Well, I wouldn’t accuse you of anything.
It's the most talked about film you’ve made
in recent years. It’s a stunning piece of work.
OS: It’s misunderstood.
SB: All great work is misunderstood. Look
at Galileo. The Pope threw him in prison
because he was telling the truth.
OS: Galileo! [laughs] Say, I’ve got to get toa
wedding by six. Let's continue this Monday.
You're coming down [ hope?

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The scene at Illusion Entertainment seems pretty mellow for a late Monday
afternoon. Giant color posters of all of Stone's films hang on the walls:
Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Natural Born Killers, and Mixon most
prominently displayed. A few pleasant, young film school types staff the
office. A Chinese producer sits below several colorful action movie posters
displaying Chinese movie icons, with one glass wall stretching out to infinity.
The view of the Pacific goes almost to Asia. Wild palms sway along the
Santa Monica escarpment, that 100 foot drop-off along the Pacific Coast
Highway that separates the LA plateau from the rest of the world.

This is as far as you can go, final destination of the American dream.
Go west young man, to LALA land. This is the edge, the end of the line, the
bleeding, windward edge of the American Continent.

Here on the 6th floor, atop the westernmost office building on the West
Coast, sits Command Central for Oliver Stone's dreamtrip machine, Illusion
Entertainment. Headquarters for the Oliver Stone School of Film Making.

Praised and pilloried, lambasted by the press, Stone is one of very few
movie directors to be “damned by fame”— to catch the public fascination in
a Way generally reserved for actors.

Toss the script of prepared questions out the sixth floor window, check
your weapons, labels or preconceived notions at the door and go with the flow.

This is Oliver UNMUZzZled.

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MONDO [58] 2000

Part 2:

[Stone is meeting with a production staff
member about shooting the opening titles for
U-Turn. Mondo 2000 is tuning in]

Oliver Stone: What do you mean if something
goes wrong?! Like what could go wrong?
STAFFER: What could go wrong is if there’s
a problem when they shoot the titles and
they fuck it up. These things can happen.
OS: [to Steve] People don’t have any com-
prehension that directing is mostly behind
the scenes work. You get through the mix,
you're at the lab, you spend hours and
hours and you're tired.

The point is, by the time a movie comes
out the actors are all rested and they always
do what they want to do. But the director has
been working very hard, editing, finalizing

seen and witnessed all since the beginning of time. And that perhay

skiers who get in the gate. They would
come up the line, they’re like three away
and get in the gate, and that was their
moment. Then BOOM! They open the gate
and you're down the course. Except that
they didn’t tell you there were like fourteen
people with rifles aiming at you as you're
going down, with bows and arrows. And
they throw fireballs out there too, barbed
wire, and a lot of shit like that.

I'm still in love with dialogue. That's
been one of my things. I love Chayevsky,
love having speeches in my movies, great
monologues. I didn’t put any monologues
in U-Turn at all. The guy never stops one
time to ask “Who am I?” or “What am I
doing here?” It’s all kind of fluid. Sean Penn
is a very fluid actor. He’s sort of playing
himself here, or somebody close to himself.
He did it without rehearsal. He came in fast.
He replaced Bill Paxton within three days.
He showed up the first day.

The first day I always shoot some road
shots, and the guy had been up all night. It
all takes place in 24 hours, the whole movie,
and he’s supposed to be driving all night, and
he comes into town and blows his radiator
out, and that’s supposed to be the opening
structure. And Sean shows up from LA
totally wiped, he drove all night to Arizona.
He’d been signed like three days before, and
I think we made the deal about eight hours
before we started filming, because he
wouldn't start unless he had a deal.

s | am here on this earth to write

it looked like a little boat, and he used it
during the shoot sometimes.

SB: Was this at your instigation or did he just
do it to get into the mood of the character?
OS: Oh, we were lucky to just make the deal.
I was very concerned when Bill Paxton
dropped out, and it’s true that Bill called me
back and said he would do it if I couldn't find
anybody. But it was scary for a while, I didn’t
know if I had a movie or what—all that work,
the whole cast and crew sitting around in
Arizona. And you don’t want to make a
movie with the wrong person either, so
who’s gonna play your leading man when
you're down to the wire?

SB: So how do you bear all this tension
and still make a masterpiece?

OS: Thank you. [hope it is. But I knew I
could play it myself at the end of the day!
[laughter]

SB: Are you in U-Turn in one of your
trademark cameo appearances?

OS: No, I never do that anymore. I’m too
lazy because | hate wardrobe changes.
[Mondo Photographer Tom Pitts takes his leave... . |
Tom Pitts: Thank you for letting me take
your picture.

OS: Sorry I was talking all the time.

Tom: I wanted to give you this book by
Peter Duesberg.

OS: Oh, that’s all I need, more reading about
AIDS. Jesus, what do you expect me to do?
Tom: Well he’s saying that HIV doesn’t
cause AIDS.

Ue a ea from Nexus by Henry Miller

the cut, right up to the release. We then have
to go out and talk about the movie, we gotta
defend it, it’s a thankless existence. People
don’t realize that to be photographed on TV
is a major pain in the ass.
SB: So the director is misunderstood?
OS: I don’t want to sound like I'm complaining
about it because a lot of people think it’s a
great job. But to go out and market the
picture, that whole fourth phase of the
movie business is the hardest for me, the
most difficult.
SB: Is it luck and timing, as much as skill
and being ready for the moment?
OS: Totally. That’s the problem. There’s
so much media now written on movies, you
feel like a heavily watched jockey by the
time the film comes out.

Did you ever see the winter Olympic
Games? | always feel nervous for those

It was one of those things, really loose.
I don’t think he even knew what scene he was
shooting. He was driving to this location in
the middle of Arizona, right! And every-
body, the production manager, are up at
4 o'clock in the morning, saying “Is he going
to make it? He'll never show up. The guy
blew it out somewhere!”

So sure enough at 6:23 AM or some-
thing he comes rolling in in the fucking
car, he gets out of the car man, totally
wiped out, he’d been driving all night to
get there. Did the cops bust him? I’m not
going to say. So I say to him, “Why didn’t
you take a fucking plane, Sean?” No
answer. I was thinking “What kind of
contraband did he have on him?” What
would motivate a guy to want to have his
car around? He had this really cool car

with big fins, a big, bad 67 Chevy El Camino,

MONDO [59] 2000

OS: Oh really? What causes AIDS then?
Tom: He makes a really good argument
that it was excessive drug use in the 70's
by gay populations. And poisoning by
drugs like AZT.

OS: So he says the immunity was let down
by the drugs? What does he want me to do,
get involved?

Tom: No, it’s just a gift from my friend
Kurtis Van Quill. There’s a letter from him.
And a pamphlet by Christine Maggiore.
OS: I thought it was from Christine.

Tom: No. Kurt's writing an article about it
for the next issue of Mondo. This is really
important information.

SB: Thank you so much Tom. I think we
got some spectacular images from up on the
roof, the wrestling. Bacchus wrestling with
nymphs or dryads, Eris and Persephone.
[Exit Tom]

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SB: So tell us about your book, which you began writing when you
were nineteen: A Child’s Night Dream. Where did it come from?
OS: This book is about going through adolescence, going through
the first major crisis in my life, first being conscious and being con-
scious in a literary way, because I read a lot. So there’s a lot of big
words but it’s fun, it’s done in a poetic kind of style. I would like to
do an audio of the book. To me it reads best as poetry because there
is a rhythm to it, a galloping kind of thing.

Gerard Manley Hopkins. Did you ever read his stuff? Well Eliot
has his rhythm, Hopkins has his rhythm. In various chapters I have a
different rhythm. Sometimes it’s like the rhythm of Eliot, of Hopkins.
Sometimes of Tennyson, because I always admired Tennyson.

SB: “Dear Mom”— the book is dedicated to your mother?

OS: No, that’s just chapter four. It changes style you see. There’s a
thread to the ae thing. I went back after thirty years a at the
urging of this editor Bob Weil at St.
Martin’s who really asked me to look
at it because it was worth saving. So I
took a huge mess basically, over 1200
pages—and I’d lost 500 or 700 pages or
something—and | tried to give it a
structure. So it starts with “America.”

None of this was set in any order
you understand, there was no begin-
ning, middle, or end. New York.
Goes to Yale. America Farewell in
1965. Then it goes Land Across the
Sea. It goes to Viet Nam, Saigon,
then it flashes back to France, goes to
a hooker in Bangkok who the protag-
onist knows, and his name is Oliver
Stone, but it’s sort of like a third per-
son Oliver Stone to me. Like another
person, another country. And then
war, and then the interlude, there’s
also fantasies he has, because all
young men have fantasies. And then
home. So it stretches mythologically ian se
really. He ends up in the Merchant Marines, then he ends up in
Oregon, then another fantasy, which is amazing, of his whole life.
And then this chapter called Final Things, which is an interesting
conclusion to this movie [chuckles|—I mean what's in this book.

SB: Movie? Are you thinking of making your book into a movie?
Is it your Iliad?

OS: No, it’s not written like a movie at all. I did it because I had to
do it. [had a strong passion at the time. A lot of my own work is in
here. The desire for integrity, the search for God.

It’s a rough world, kiddo. None of us gets out of it alive.

—Oliver Stone’s father Lou Stone in A Child's Night Dream

[Looking over the book] I forgot I said all this. I’ve gotten a lot of letters
from young people who told me that it had affirmed them in some
way, because a lot of them are hungry, or how do you say, outside
the norm. They don’t know if they are OK. That's a big thing when
you are young. You don’t realize that a lot of other people are also
going through a lot of pain and that helps you to understand that
you are not isolated.

I was so isolated that I really was considered... sick. I damaged
myself, I hurt myself unnecessarily in some ways because of my
isolation. I took to negative thinking too much, and the energy was
devoted to not believing I could ever be successful at anythine—
which is part of the reason | went into the infantry, to disappear.
SB: But you triumphed in the end. Your ability to put these feelings
into words is a rare talent. Part of your work evokes these deep
feelings in people which they don’t want to acknowledge.

OS: This is good here, what I said: [after telling his father he was
dropping out of Yale... |

“My father was furious. He said ‘You’re going to regret this

for the rest of you life. What are you going to do with your

life? You're going to be a bum! You think you're a writer

but you're not.” [from Stone by James Riordan, p.38]

The joy, the true joy for any
working person in this matter is
the creation of something that is
special, that people would just
appreciate. It doesn’t have to be
the most loved, it doesn’t have
to win the Academy Award, it
doesn’t have to be the best any-
thing. It just is a good piece of
work, like craftsmanship.

When you see a movie you
just want to enjoy those two hours
in the dark. It’s a dream world
that you enter into. A covenant
with other people, the people on
the screen and the makers of the
film, to go on a trip —[laughs]—
it’s really simple. At the end of
the day that’s what's beautiful.

Did you like the movie? [The
Doors]... [looking at the photos in
the Riordan book, of his son Sean and
others] .. .look how fat he was!

nice pictures... I think Elizabeth

He’s much more beautiful now...
gave them to him. Look how young Tom [Cruise] looks! [laughs]
That's the wrestling scene [in Born on the Fourth of July]. Here’s a
great shot [looking at a photo of him, his former wife Elizabeth and son

Sean]... it looks like a happy couple.

SB: It probably was at that time.

OS: It was.

SB: Happiness is very dynamic. If you can hold onto it you are
very lucky.

OS: This is the real me. [Looking at two photos, one of him sitting at a
manual typecoriter writing JFK at his Santa Barbara home, the other, directing,
showing Gary Oldman how to die like Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK].

Here I am taking the hit, acting out Oswald. That's my life
story: these two pictures. [now looking at picture of Stone clowning
with Jack Lemmon and Ed Asner during JFK]

That was a great moment working with Jack Lemmon and Ed
Asner, and Walter Matthau was in the movie. I had such a trip. |
brought those guys back, ‘cause they hadn’t done the Grumpy Old
Men series yet. That came after JFK, you remember. They hadn’t
worked together in a long time, and I had seen them around and I

MONDO [60] 2000

just wanted to work together because they
were such heroes to me and my father when
I was young. All those Billy Wilder pictures
with them were fabulous.

I got to meet Billy Wilder and he treated
me like a fellow director. He was very
sweet to me. I was very flattered. It was a
few years ago and we used to have lunch
all the time, and I would try to write down
afterwards some of the things he said
because they were so funny. So I have a pile
of notes on Billy Wilder lunches [laughs]. I
said to him one day maybe I'll write these
up—Lunch with Billy Wilder —a brief book
of essays, like 67 pages... [laughs]. Few
people talk like that anymore, like Billy.
[calls to Rob, staff member] We need two things
here: A bottle of water and frappaccinos—
they’re very bad for your diet.

SB: So what about visual language?

OS: I'd say it starts in the script. You and I
are talking. Everything we are saying
essentially is very interesting, to us in this
moment in the first dimension because we
are fascinated by the unpredictability of
what's going to happen. But visually this
is very static, probably a boring image—two
people talking in profile at each other. How
to make this interesting is a big challenge.
I would go about it minutely.

I would first of all try to figure out, well
the lighting’s not bad, but try to get some
decent light going. And also we have some
views out the windows. [sweeping views of a
trademark Technicolor California sunset over
the Pacific Ocean| Obviously, we have some
sculpture, we have an office, there’s things
to play off of.

But ultimately if it is going to work,
we re gonna have to get to the words and
the words would interpret for us. | would
probably cut away to some of the concepts
that are being illustrated. I might shoot, I
could shoot this way [pointing into my facel,
I could shoot over, I could shoot into, I
could shoot your lips, your eyes, your
nose, the way of your habits, your manner
of talking. I could pull back to a wide and
have the whole room, and have that effect,
bouncing off. Some tight singles or else
overs. Lalso havea choice. I could shoot
low, shoot high, I could shoot over shoulder,
I could cut across the axis and shoot across
your shoulders that way [pointing in another
direction]. So | could combine a shot of
you this way, this way, and then I have it
cut this way and that way. I could doa
split screen.

What I’m trying to say is that I've given
you about fifty options of how to shoot this
very normally conventional scene. Too
many directors I find just don’t look deep
enough into their vision. A lot of directors
are paying lip service to the plot, too. We
all do. We have to keep the thing structured
in a way that comes home and resonates.
People just historically will not go too far
adrift. They won't drift too much without
having a feeling that they're going some-
where, that there’s a thread. I personally
enjoy mood films to some degree, I drift on
them. But the mood has to be in tune with
what I want too.

SB: Are you saying that the most interesting
aspect of a scene is the controlled
uncertainty?

OS: That’s what Kubrick got. When I was
growing up | felt that in the movies.
Everybody else would shoot pretty
conventionally, but when I saw Godard or
Kubrick, in that period when I was studying
film with more intensity, there was an
unpredictability about Stanley Kubrick.
Even when | was a kid, I didn’t know what
he would do next. It’s a wonderful feeling,
it’s a very powerful thing. How do you
recreate that unpredictability?

It’s the way Kubrick looks at reality. His
reality is supercharged. Some people say
mine is very intense, too—no matter what |
do it’s intense. I could try to make a comedy
and it would still be intense.

SB: Intense Comedy.
OS: That's a good title. Some people will
say that U-Turn is an intense comedy.

I guess it leads back to: Respect the
moment very much. Everything is sacred
inasense. There is no conventional moment,
only that your mind will let it be conventional
and turn it into an ordinary two shot. [ hate
that because you get into the editing room
and I spend a lot of time working on a film
and seeing it over and over again. The
boring stuff always goes, it doesn’t last. It’s
shallow. I could be wrong sometimes. My
films have had every accusation, but rarely
of being boring.

It's always working at something and
you realize that it’s working at something,
it’s provoking you. And that’s the result of
much refinement actually. Because you
have to really intensify through those ideas.
You have to live with the film for a long
time as a director and editor. You are in
there for an intense six months, and if some-
thing is phony in there it will bother you

MONDO [61 | 2000

until the day you remove it from the film.
You may not realize it—subconsciously it’s
been phony. It finally takes the eighth
screening perhaps to say that's what's been
bugging you, you never bought that. Then
you pull it out and you have to start over.

So it’s a process of refining your own
thinking—and that's not just verbally but also
visually. Sometimes you think something is
verbally brilliant but unfortunately it’s not
playing because it wasn’t done right visually.

A director’s job is never done. You
could always do better. I guess the best
director would have really, really thought
through intensely every moment of the film,
like Hitchcock supposedly did, and could
just go right to it. But Kubrick takes a year
to make his last movie and does fifty takes,
so! And I know a lot of directors shooting,
like James Brooks—he is very talented but I
bet you he does a lot of takes. And Warren
Beatty was infamous for that. So there is
always room for analysis.

You can analyze something to life, or
sometimes, unfortunately, to death.
SB: Death. Death and women. Death
and Sex. Are they all related in your
work? Don’t the French have a saying
for orgasm—lIa petite mort?
OS: Do they? It’s a beautiful expression—
too bad Americans don’t have anything like
that in their language. The small death, the
lesser death, the smaller death, the little one
before the big one.

a SSS a a Ta

SB: How do you continue to maintain the
momentum of your film making?

OS: I use the momentum to create more
momentum. I had a good run of ten or
eleven good years, and I made eleven
movies. They were all tough movies, tough
to get made, tough to finance, and ambi-
tious. I’m glad I did it. And I knew at the
time that it was a rare thing.

If you get the power from one movie,
then use it. You will never feel right in
yourself unless you use it to make some-
thing even more difficult. I’m glad I used
the power I had when I had it, because
they are very fast to take it away.

They're always chipping away at you, gli
telling you that your last movie didn’t Yep:
make money, or this or that. They're
always trying to put the negative :
something. So I've gotten an eno |
amount of hits in the last ten yea :

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If I put it together in a computer—I might do that one day—it
would be a tremendous cubic psychic energy that was launched to
destroy me, to destroy my thinking. Very negative.

I didn’t realize, I underestimated the power of jealousy, the power
of envy, I really did. It was a big mistake. But you learn as you go.

[had a run, I did it. I took the success of Platoon and I was able to
make Born on the Fourth of July which was smart. And a business
movie called Wall Street. I took the amazing success of Born—thank
God for Tom Cruise’s involvement—and I turned that into a one-two
hit, The Doors and JFK.

Now JFK was an impossible film to have made. Three hours
with a very high degree of dialogue, at a cost of $40-some million
dollars. And it got done with a huge cast, a cast that worked for
pretty much very little, except for Kevin [Costner]. And we did the
movie, it worked, and that was amazing. | thought it would blow
out at that. I did the right thing.

A lot of people I know, they get a success and they want to go
out and make a more commercial picture. They’re not really doing
the work for themselves. They're doing it because they want to
please their masters, or they feel like they're on a roll, and they don’t
want the luck to end by having cold dice. Well, everybody gets cold
dice once in a while. It’s how you handle it after that.

SB: When Talk Radio came out it wasn’t commercially successful.
OS: [quick to interject] It was cold but I moved on quickly to Born. It
was a small film, made for $2 million. It got hurt the most.

I more or less used the JFK thing to make Nixon, which is an
amazing thing to have made because it is a three hour political
biography. It’s serious, it’s complicated, and it didn’t make any
money. The dice went cold. Partly because I think the character, the
subject matter of Mr. Nixon is cold. They’ve hammered him, that
was part of the problem.

The dice went cold, but I did a good thing with the dice, I played
them, and I got two political pictures done that are antipodal. One's
a biography, one’s a search for the what history is—a tearing apart of
the so-called reality veil. So they both got made, and that’s an amaz-
ing run I’m telling you. I mean I can’t complain.

Heaven and Earth, unfortunately, didn’t do anything commercially
either, and that really hurt me because | really put a lot into that.

SB: Heaven and Earth is a very spiritual film and it brings tears to
your eyes when you watch Le Ly’s struggle unfold.

OS: I still cry when I see that film. It’s just beautiful. People say I
dislike women—I love women! I mean Heaven and Earth... what
do I have to do? I love that story! I love that woman!

SB: But your films will live forever, so despite its initial commercial
failure, imagine audiences 30 or 40 years from now. The real
excitement over some of your films may not come for decades.
You might not be around to see it.

OS: How sad.

SB: But look at what happened to Van Gogh.

OS: Yeah, I wanna live like Vincent. That was a hard life man. What
I'm saying I guess is a little bit like I’ve got to be a warrior. I realize
that—really tough. You do get scalded alive here. Not only does the
work get criticized, but often it is ignored or dismissed.

SB: Which is worse?

OS: Both. Both are bad. Heaven and Earth was ignored and dismissed.
But a lot of people would still come up to me and say “that’s the

most beautiful film ever made, the most spiritual.” It’s a
Buddhist film actually, it really is in its spirit because it reflects
her spirit, Le Ly.

The spirit of forgiveness, that was the beauty of it. I had thought
“great story” because all western movies generally relate to revenge,
to getting even. This girl, she took a lot of shit, but she won, she beat
‘em. But how did she beat them? She beat ‘em really by forgiveness,
that’s how she beat ‘em. She didn’t beat ‘em by doing well, she
didn’t beat ‘em by writing a book, she beat ‘em by being able to
accept those people who would hurt her, in her heart. And in her
heart say “I forgive you and I wish you well. And I thank you for
having taught me these lessons because in their own way they
opened my eyes to myself.”

That’s a tough message to sell in a western society. That’s why
the Tommy Lee Jones character commits suicide. He commits suicide
but in a weird way. He also becomes Buddhist in that he seeks the
spirit. The little Wizard character then comes and tells her that he is
still around, that he’s checking it out. He dies naked which is a very
Buddhist method.

SB: Yes, you quickly cut back to that image for a second glimpse,
as if to ask the viewer, “Are you sure of what you saw?”

OS: People notice. It only does $6 million or whatever, which is
an art house gross. The point is, the film does get seen and certain
people will really get it deeply. People like you, you saw it, you got
it, and you relate.

SB: How can you judge what is a failure at that moment?

OS: You know what a failure is? When you know you sold it out,
you know you didn’t do it, you didn’t complete it, you just didn’t
give a fuck. I know, it happens to directors, I’ve seen it. But it hasn’t
happened yet on these eleven films. Is it eleven or is it twelve? I
forget already—in a row.

U-Turn is a new period in my life, having passed fifty. My book
is out. That took a lot of time. I took six months off after Nixon to
edit the book and to put it back together and to do some revisions
here and there.

SB: As I scan the book, there it is again, death and women. Your
portrayal of the harlot as temple. Is there any hope in this culture?
OS: I think we have to take the bargain we got. We were born into
a highly privileged society. America. Volatile. Dynamic. Fun.
Tremendous copy as well as fun to ride the seesaw. But the deal is
we re puritanically split, that was always the deal. At the very
beginning the Puritans got control, and they were always fighting
from the get-go in American history. Prohibition is a disaster.
Prohibition was a disaster for this country, and the Puritans put
that one through. And it really led to a lot of the modern corruption
and organized crime.

And the sex laws—the feminists missed the point in my opinion.
They're always rappin’ for equality for women, but they don’t under-
stand that behind it is sexuality, and it’s the American, the Anglican
view, of sexuality that has rerouted women. Here we are not sexually
communicating the right way. People are not fucking enough,
basically, and they are not fucking the right way.

The women aren't getting off and neither are the men. A lot of
American men—I really feel sorry for them—they don’t get enough
sex. They get a lot of that Playboy fantasy sex—virtual and cyber sex
is very popular—but they’re not getting the real thing. They need a

I'm that way. | travel alone and | am so blind that | am not able or willing to differentiate between people, for they are all the same to me, creatures to be
met, interrogated, and left behind. | am a lodestone without polarity, the mathematician who has reasoned out the odds and decided against. There is forever

MONDO [64] 2000

little more Kama Sutra in their lives. The bed is 54 or 69 positions—
whatever they say it is—it really is. You can have a great orgasm
and you can have fun and you can fuck and you don’t always have
to fuck the same person to feel good, I mean you can too—but you
don’t have to.

So it’s like dope. Talking about freedoms and permissions we allow
ourselves. Thank you very much but I don’t need some government
to tell me what my joy can be or not. But we do accept those traditions
now. Our forefathers cut a deal. We live in society, therefore we put
up with condoms and with the laws of sexuality which put many
of us behind bars—for drugs and sex. We have so much violence
because we don’t have good sex.

SB: You open JFK with Eisenhower's 1960 farewell to office speech
warning the country to watch out for the military/industrial complex.
OS: Eisenhower is an interesting man. He went through a lot. He
was hardly a liberal. He was an extremely conservative man. So
why would he stop after eight years of basically a victory? He'd
won, he got out, he had done the game totally. He had achieved
everything that Doug MacArthur, his one time chief, had wanted
to and failed. He’d become everything that George Washington
would have dreamed of. He was a George Washington figure in
many ways.

But Dwight was at the heart of much of that National Security
State shit and saw it first hand. Why would he stop after eight years?
Why would the most profound wisdom he could pass on to us be
that statement? Because he saw something coming that was far
worse that he knew was BAD for the country. And that’s what
makes him a fundamentally decent man. [laughs]

My dad was right about him. And of course the apologists, all
those people like the regressives of the world, they said “He didn’t
say that. He really meant that...” They always come up with
another meaning for what he said. But it’s not true, that’s what he
said. He warned us. Period. He warned us about a group of men
and companies and corporations that would endanger our freedoms.
Period.

SB: Are you saying the image streamers, the media corporations
control us? You have said that whoever controls the memory of a
nation controls its destiny. Why are people shown the images they are?
OS: Actually JFK was one of the first pictures to go after the media.
Chayevsky’s Network did too, and was effective I thought, but some-
how was embraced more by the media. You can’t watch that movie
without asking, why didn’t the press do something? It’s a naked
finger in their face.

SB: It’s reached the point where you've become so iconized that
in the movie Conspiracy Theory the Mel Gibson character rants
about you and your conspiracy theories, and that you worked for
the CIA and George Bush, and that “they” still let you make
those films, even though you know so much. Are “they” now
propagating misinformation about you as such an icon?

OS: [with a frown on his face] They got onto that right away. If you
notice how ridiculous the media has gotten, how desperate to say
that Oliver Stone-believes-that-Elvis-is-alive, that’s basically what
they are saying. They've lumped us all together.

I would go the other way and say that you have to be a troglodyte
or dinosaur to stand by the single bullet, the single assassin theory,
given all the evidence that has come in. Not to doubt it would make
you either a fool, a moron, a retard, or else a conspiracy person—a
conspiracy against allowing the truth to come out.

OS: You asked what am I going to do next.
I don’t know. It’s going to slow down a
little bit. I’d like to do something major.
See, it’s a question of energy. | just can’t
bang it out like I used to. I mean it’s too
much. Part of the energy comes from being
new and being unexpected. They don’t
know what's going to come next, it’s a
surprise. But unfortunately a lot of that
element is robbed, denied me, because I’m
always being watched, and labeled and
categorized. It’s a drag.

So avoiding categories is part of the
game, camouflage is part of the game, never
signaling too much, being smart, talking one
game, going the other way. What's that
famous strategy in Sun Tzu: The Art of War.
You know, you kind of get the eye going
that way and then do that. [cross-pointing
with his eyes and fingers] Fooling the eye.

Every project I would try to develop
would get around. I would normally be
developing four, five, six things at one time.
Sometimes you're writing it, or another
person’s writing it, but it takes time, a year,
two years. Well, of course with me they
announce everything within a week. Like
I'm doing this movie, it makes national
headlines, you know. But they don’t realize
that this is like an R&D business, too. You
research and develop ten things, and then
you come down to producing only one. No
one takes that into account.

I get letters from all over the world ona
continuing basis. “Oh, I hear you're doing
this story of, ah, Houdini. I knew Houdini.”
“T hear you're doing the story of every single
man in jail for-any-kind-of-noble-reason.”
—I've gotten a letter about it. It’s unbelievable,
I can’t answer all the mail, I can’t deal with
it. There’s just too many people out there
who are hungry for justice. They see me as
a justicier—a man who seeks justice—some-
body who can do good. I have prisoners
write me with awe, like I have such power.
“You can do a movie and get me out of here
and change the whole world.” People look
to you with big hopes.

I have so little power because as you
know the studio heads have the real power.
Directors, we're just gladiators in the arena
and if you lose a couple of films in terms of
financials, they'll slaughter you. They like
to two-thumbs down you, man! [growling]
“Stone is over the hill. It’s about time it
happened to him, man. This guy is good

for nothing. I'm glad he failed.” All that
ugly stuff. It’s another game.

The point is I guess, less energy. Make it
count more. You gotta be smarter about it. So
you take your energy and you get ready and
when you go—I mean I'd like to do something
BIG. I'd like to do something that I can maybe
go out on and say “this is the last film I do.”
That this is the ONE. I'd really like to do
something that sums up everything I stood
for, if can, at the turn of the century.
Whatever.

Then go to Asia all the time, full-time
[laughs]. No I'd come back here. I like the
States, I like the energy. I get it.

SB: Here you're on the edge of the Pacific...
OS: I’m often over there—also Europe, my
third choice. I’m not including Australia.
[musing] I don’t know if I'd consider

Australia a choice. [fz

Webography
http://globetrotter.Berkeley.edu/Stone
“Conversations with History” interview
May, 1997, by Prof. Harry Kreisler of
Berkeley’s Institute for International Studies

http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/Stone/
stone-grad1.html
Berkeley Commencement speech of May 1994

jaobrien@mindspring.com
Fan email

Sy ar TY
A Child’s Night Dream
by Oliver Stone; 1997, St. Martin’s Press, NY

STONE: The Controversies, Excesses, and
Exploits of a Radical Filmmaker
by James Riordan; 1995 Hyperion, NY

Killer Instinct

by Jane Hamsher; 1997 Broadway Books, NY
Tall-tale, tell-all told by a former co-producer of
Natural Born Killers

Pert ar

Oliver Stone - Inside Out

Directed by Joel Sucher & Steven Fischler
(1992) available from: The Cinema Guild
1697 Broadway, New York 10019

tel. 212-246-5522 fax. 212-246-5525

MONDO [67] 2000

vailable at fine

Sa ROSCRURe

William S. Burroughs reading
from his novel, The Western
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SEVEN SOULS also includes new
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erre Thaemlitz.

Look for new
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IN STORES 1998. =.

For a free brochure or to order

direct call: 1-800-578-4419
~ £eir FY

VISIT TRILOKA ON THE NET AT:
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based on what the truth might be. They can’t do that because
of all the secrecy. So there are some folks now who represent
another view. They're very interested in a new open system for
both information gathering and dissemination. | was involved
in the efforts to get them on the web. You can’t imagine how
resistant they were to that.

RU: They do have a web site...

PB: They have a web site and it’s chock full of good stuff. If you
want to get the latest maps of politically boxy regions like the
Balkans, that’s the place to go.

Anyway, they're interested in declassifying also. And
there’s a lot of resistance. The problem is that the whole process
of declassification involves shortening the length of so many
bureaucratic penises. Inside that system, the way you enlarge
your dick is to have the capacity to declare as much stuff secret
as possible. The actual sensitivity of the information is far less
relevant than your ability to declare it sensitive. And you can
imagine what kind of mentality that breeds. One of them said
to me, “What we're trying to do is determine reality”.

50,1 got into the nerve center of the CIA. You'd imagine some
kind of James Bondian reality... massive parallel computing
with the entire world’s information and all this secret stuff.
But the nerve center of the CIA is five analysts sitting around a

aie! pene in felace oe .
oe oe Sa little poe — S ine advanced. But no nes

have nailed is satellite systems. They have developed some sophisti-
cated systems. They’re taking pictures from space with resolution
down to the size of a cigarette pack. The problem is that they have
all this information and they don’t have any capacity to render it
intelligible. They evaluate their effectiveness by how many
images they have. So what?! It’s like how the Soviets used
to evaluate the success of their programmers. They'd weigh
the computer chips. [/aughter]. They focused so
thoroughly on the other side for so long,
they became it. There’s an old Arab
proverb, “Choose your enemies well;
for you will eventually become
them.” That's precisely what
happened. The pictures on the
wall in the CIA are of scenes
inside Russia. Even the
wallpaper in
some
places

are old
maps of
Moscow!

RU: Another g group ‘ak ae Cs
JPB: Yeah. They’ re socially oe ea re Paranoid.

“possibly be ina society that isn’t really very straight. -

L re ncreasinglyu una in se _ They're the kids

They’re too smart by half, and they're as straight eu can :

RU: Militia-type publications have been claiming that thee :

this fifth column i in the CIA that’s been shoe information — RU: a have that anti-terrorism bill... _

In | 1, and that includes
en under the wire
a that people

G Ofeedom i in Teh ina ‘way ee ver makes the oils
_ And people don’t know about it. Because it's not the O, J. trial.

on corruption in politics and using it to blackmail

corrupt politicians. And this is why
so many of them have been
quitting. Do you know
anything about this?
JPB: I’m not privy
to this, but I
“. “s believe it more
==" or less. I think
«it’s one of the
reasons that
Clinton has been
‘so spineless. It’s
because they've got
him in a lot of ways.
- ll tell you something.
~ When I was around the
White House petitioning
against the Clipper Chip
‘(government-sponsored
_ encryption scheme to
eliminate freely available
_ strong public encryption),

JPB: A beautiful case in point. They pass an anti-terrorism bill
after an incident that might have been caused by the federal
government! I’m not paranoid enough to think that they actually
blew that plane up in order to keep their jobs, but I’m getting
there. You just have to ask yourself: Who benefits? Who is going
to reap the most from these incidents? It’s the obsolete cold war
state. That's a lot of people who need to make their car payments.
They don’t want to quit working. They have to have a justification
for being employed And it’s not out of the question that some of
those people figure they'll produce a justification.

RU: We’re never going to figure out what's going on. It’s
gotten too complicated. We’re never going to know who killed
Kennedy, because we're into such a media babel. If you proved
who killed Kennedy, there would still be enough disinformation
around to raise public doubt. Nobody can get to the bottom
line on anything.

JPB: There are so many wheels within wheels within wheels...
Also, the way that information is managed inside the governmental
apparatus is so compartmentalized. Everybody’s sitting on their
own little pile of information. There's no way even within the
system to gain access to any large percentage of it. I don’t care if
you re the head of the CIA, there’s an awful lot of information
that you can’t get to.

RU: I thought about that when John Deutch was denying that the CIA was involved with
cocaine. Everybody on the street knows that the CIA has been involved in drug dealing
all along... .. because you know somebody who got mixed up with — 4 down

a) Winter 1979 Bar Cross Ranch, Barlow fills the hay-sled with bales to feed the
livestock. b) Tools of the trade. c) At -40F these hungry Herefords huddle in the
New Fork River Valley. d) On the Farm School in Massachusetts 1996. e) Bar Cross
_Land & Livestock entrance to Barlow’s ranch f) Pinedale (Pop. 1181, Elev. 7175)
Barlow’ s home town. g) Barlow always does things in a big way (stack built by Steve Kromer, It'll Do Custom Stacking Co.
h) Barlow trapped by his hay-stacking sweep 1987, Sublette County, Wyoming. i-j) Everything’s broken, all the time.
Replacing a differential in a ‘47 International Harvestor, when the nearest part store is 250 miles away, is all part of a day’s
work. k) Barlow, Ken Kesey and Jon Mcintire do Dylan and the Dead, Eugene, OR, Summer 1987. |!) November 1996, pre-coffee
preparing for an Election Day speaking engagement. m) Backstage at the Dead, Oakland Coliseum, New Year’s 1990.

MONDO eto) 2000

‘the effect deviates fer th the intention. Tt S noe as sif the story’ 5.
: connected to the writer.

“NEWT MORNING | ,
RU: Ihave a very unpleasant subject to bring up... Newt
Gingrich. You've said some nice things about him. So what
is there to like? He wants to hang drug users in the public
square. He’s helped to increase the military budget. He
| _tried to censure Torricelli when he brought out revelations
| about CIA torture in Guatemala. I could go on and on...
| JPB: Gingrich is another one of those faces where the balloon he
has over his head, the great virtual myth, is greatly at variance
___ with the guy himself. And the characteristics of that balloon —
have to do not so much with the policies of belief, but the -
| policies of belief that he remains silent about, because he’s
trying to hold together an incredibly shaky coalition. He’s
holding together two halves of the Republican party that hate
each other. The party consists of fundamentalist authoritarians
and laissez faire libertarians. And there are some things they _
agree on about limiting the size of the government andthe — JPB Well, really there’s a balancing between the Deadheads and |
-uselessness of the welfare state as it’ s been constructed. Ina a the Dead. The lighter and more loving things became out front —
sense, he’ s tryin among the Deadheads, the darker and more twisted they became
he backstage. There was a great sacrifice involved in making that
thing go on. After Brent died, the way they dealt with that was
so callous and unfeeling. Towards the end, the range of emotional

RU: He’ 8 ‘font oe te all the rdeeedual rights-busting
. Dagpnian crime bills... the a es ae aes

a
_ ae te

‘Tt’s a lot safer there.” And Garcia ae “Man, if | could do that
I would. But, unfortunately, I’m strapped in here.

ae Aad ‘he said,” “af T did what was seit under these They’re all enormously sensitive as individuals. But they
circumstances, | Nas Lie aoe oo allowed themselves to become part of a beast that was dark and
ee a ~-eold and absolutely heartless. I mourn the Grateful Dead. Ilament _
that I will never have one of those epiphanies that periodically —
occurred at a Grateful Dead concert. But things had gotten SO.
_ bad that it was time. :

MONDO aa 2000

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They had gotten used to living in
very plush circumstances. They never
stayed anyplace but a Four Seasons
Hotel. There was a lot of ironically
plush living. I can’t cast any stones;
I was as much a beneficiary as anyone
else, and I was delighted by it. It’s
there, you take it. There was such a
strong cultural impetus against judg-
ment and moral imperatives, that it
ended up creating a kind of moral
vacuum. So there was no awareness
of a point where irony crosses over
into gross hypocrisy.

RU: How do you locate that line?
JPB: I think there’s a lot of truth in
that Dylan line “to live outside the law
you must be honest.” I’m one of the
least judgmental people I know. You
have to fuck up pretty magnificently
before I'll be incapable of finding some
extenuating circumstance to get you
off the hook. But I do try to have my
own personal morality. It’s about how
you treat people, basically. I don’t
require that other people share my
values, but I do require that I have my
own. And they’re pretty straight in
some ways.

RU: I heard a hysterical story about
the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan
heading to Jerry’s funeral. Do you
want to tell that story?

B: Dylan is the strangest little creature.
He’s one of those characters that the
holy prankster god decides to channel
itself through. Further proof that God
has a sense of humor. Because it never
picks the worthy. It always picks the
least likely candidate for the job. And
Dylan is inspired, but he’s a peculiar
little guy. So we're all headed over to
Bob Hunter's house after the funeral.
I'm driving a rent-a-car, and getting
directions from Weir, who was in kind
of a strange state. He had been hit
unbelievably hard. And he’s not all
that great at directions even in the best
of circumstances. And Dylan is in a
chauffered limousine behind us. He’s
following our lead. And Weir's sending us
up all these blind alleys and cul-de-sacs.
There’s a lot of turning around and
going in the other direction and hand
waving. Dylan is starting to radiate
unhappiness. When Dylan is unhappy,
you can feel it two blocks away. And I
was thinking, I don’t care how weird

MONDO [82] 2000

this guy is, he’s still the great Bob Dylan
and he thinks I’m a complete fuck up.
Because he’s assuming that since I’m
driving, I’m responsible for all this. So
I’m pretty embarrassed. Anyway, we
finally went up one of those extremely
narrow Mill Valley streets and got into
a really narrow spot where it was obvi-
ous we weren't headed the right way,
but the only way we could turn around
was to angle ourselves into this driveway.
So I'm thinking everything is fine and I
drive forward. What I don’t know is
there’s a drop off—some stairs that
lead down to somebody's house. And
I drive right off this thing. And suddenly
the front wheels are pawing air.
Everybody in the back seat jumps out
and suddenly the car goes boing! and
all of it’s wheels are off the ground.
And it’s poised there, teetering back
and forth, and threatening to cascade
down into these people’s front door.
We don’t know what we're gonna do.
We're blocking the street. Cars are
coming down. We're all in the street in
total distress. Dylan comes out of his
limousine, and the look on his face was
so disgusted.

So I said, “Look, if we all get
together here and grab the front end
and shove it back while somebody else
puts it in reverse, it’s possible that we
could shove it back along the frame
where the front wheels are lifted and
pop it back out. So this is what we did
and it worked like a charm. | mean,
the whole thing didn’t take but three
minutes. We were in this complete
Mongolian clusterfuck one minute and
out of it the next.

Of course, Dylan wasn’t about to be
part of the team that popped the car out—
there were six or seven guys, some of
them passersby trying to get past us
down the street, so it was an odd collec-
tion of folk. But the moment we were
reaching out to make this great effort and
push the car back out of danger, I turned
around and there was Dylan about five
feet behind us with the strangest smirk on
his face. It was the only time I’ve seen the
little asshole smile. So as soon as we got
the car up and out, I looked to see what
his reaction was. And he immediately
spun on his heels and was headed back
toward his limousine without giving us
the grace of any appreciation. Jz’

Photos by Jill Posener

KATHY ACKER

TRIBUTE

1 he depth of Kathy Acker’s legacy is hidden
from view. Like the treasure in her last
ereat novel, Pussy, King of the Pirates, it

might be too complex, amorphous, perverse, alive,

to be clearly defined. The labels— “sexually
transgessive postmodernist” “the original literary
riot grrl’”—can only hint at the rich texture of her
body of works. At once bracingly intellectual and
utterly elemental—Acker wrote from her cunt
and from her dreams, crafting worlds full of signs
and portents, deep resonances, sensory triggers,
potent currents. What I’m saying here, and what
the official lit people have not been able to tell
you because it’s outside the world of lit, is that
Acker was a magician. She lived as a magician
and she died, controversially, as a magician.
Critics and commentators emphasized her
raw punk sexuality, her in-your-face radical
impatience with bullshit, her feminist anger. And
while all that was a vital aspect of her personality,
its function in her work was to whip up the
energy for the first cause—to use storytelling
Reece ene nr seme Come ON Cece oentcee

postmodern urban campfire grrl voodoo wherein

characters (ex)changed skin, gender, temporal
and physical location, and personal histories.
Bits of appropriated text functioned as evocations
and invocations for a ceremony that was wholly
of her own making.

In all of this she is similar only to William S.
Burroughs, who was also primarily involved
with magick. They appear as twin avatars of the
nomadic urban modern primitive tribes, making
unsentimental-yet-poignant storybook lives out
of the detritus of brutal, end-of-the-century
hypercapitalism—Burroughs’ wild boys and
Fa Comm ial Ce mcate ce

Acker died as she lived. Rejecting bureaucratic
Western medicine, she consorted with magicians,
healers, shamans, nutritionists, brujos, and psychics.
This process didn’t cure her cancer (as she deluded
oars ernicon ec Ccastamublaiarimerl ccm iomecioe
Hers was not the path of designer dying—she
spent a year in defiant denial. She took that rage
and those fears to explore her core etiology—early
woundings and the certain knowledge of her
own freakishness. The fruit of that final ferocious
encounter with herself is Requiem, the libretto for
Pus cer aae) oe

Her legacy? The libretto of her life, a new kind
of picaresque heroine—tunny, feisty, fractious, and

able to own her own hormones. Jf2 ——R.U.Sirius

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M2: Much more to
as

BO: For example the
experiments of Bob
Jahn at Princeton,
Robert Jahn. His
paetsebeites tem aig
random event generators,
influenced by observers in
tepeatable ways, which then
Acco Ces th ebeten oT oye

e influencing more than

es. People can influence
dattatcamelee bea e

Head CmeoeCen ENCES

yf ITC ANE? O

BO: I’m unaware of whether that distinction was considered. These
were devices producing binary sequences, ones and zeros, at a ai
rapid rate. A test subject would come in and focus on a specific event.
UCR s MM leC lei ne-Le(e Momsen Maecal ccm Corrected hy
significant. There were also ways of amplifying these results: Bonded
couples. Groups working together...

PCR aC RICE ec lae rl mmc Nem ORt mag Rumen te litt
BO: Tremendous resistance. Bob Jahn was almost kicked out of
Princeton for presenting his results. Almost like John Mack at Harvard,
the psychiatry professor who came out with UFO abduction material.
But this has happened throughout history: Galileo's colleagues refused
to look through his telescope; the French Academy of Sciences in the
seventeen hundreds refused to acknowledge meteorites existed, because
rocks can’t fall out of the sky; the journalist who covered the Wright
Brothers flight, the original one, was fired from his position, because
heavier than air machines can’t fly. When we look at concepts like free
energy and consciousness research...

M2: And the two are inextricably linked, in some
way...

BO: Yes, oh yes. The new paradigm is ready to
come through. As Bertrand Russell once said: the
resistance to a new idea increases by the square of its
importance. And if you talk about a two trillion
dollar a year energy infrastructure worldwide that
will be supplanted by a whole new technology, we
are talking about tremendous resistance, tremendous
change. There is no question that these things are really
Meyers atees

MPM oma R Cr Terr iCMG CBC Ke hiss

PLUMB omeKesarmeccoenencctatescn Caen cael
these tenured faculty, who, if they're going to accept these new
premises, would have to totally reevaluate the significance of their
Mata e

BO: Exactly. The materialist paradigm is the basis of it all and the
ADR MTS CMLs wee elem vevam aon astccceaiaoassenencet
Memo oetam-vele meee Cri tstce

PR eee atie em locaniiree OM aie Reicha golem este t cee
BO: Beginning to fund, yes. Up until now, in this country, it has been
very competitive, very suppressed, not acknowledged, but I think that’s
going to change very soon...

M2: The Japanese are funding... Ss

BO: The Japanese are funding to the tune of, I believe, one hundred
twenty million dollars a year. The Toyota Corporation is funding Pons
and Fleischman, the cold fusion inventors, to the tune of ten million a
(cleus as Reo brag ye cccic-tca tevatemelexr-]oyeventoul@ CAM occ tmcO Rp oyeseccic
There are so many stories of inventors like Mark Comings and others,
who have been suppressed, whose devices have been confiscated by the
Department of Defense, under the Secrecy Act. If the D.O.D. construes a
device to have defense applications, they can confiscate the device and
Orem SIN m avo meio aoiela- cre

These changes are profound. We’re talking about

monvo [93] 2000

OA oa etme were lm racy t ,
BO: Yes, I was an astronaut in the Apollo program in *
1967 and was appointed to go to Mars, when that was
still in NASA’s program plan.

M2: Did NASA fall under the purview of the
D.O.D.?

OMEN a eO Cr Rens netoa am cke bam Ce Oat:
open civilian exploration of space. They have since
been swept up in the vortex of the D.O.D.

M2: Were you made privy to D.O.D. information
as to the potentiality of zero point technology?
BO: I wasn’t. But that was thirty years ago—

I wasn’t interested back then. I wasn’t
pursuing It.

OAV Bim rem cirartcire
Osim yuereR (aan
applications of technology?
BO: Increasingly, I’m
getting out of conspiracy and
bal KoRcreD tte loy twa Gcra echt RGN KS
is conspiracy and suppression,
but I have energy now only for
what we can do and how we
can do it.

OO OR Ce stemrit can
receptivity to the development of
zero point technology?

BO: Sure. My book Miracle in the Void is all
about my world travels, visiting free energy inventors,
documenting the work and considering the changes
we must make to embrace this new technology.

nothing less than supplanting a two trillion dollar a
year infrastructure.

M2: Fossil fuels. ;
BO: Yes. Fossil fuel delivery. It’s such a big shift for
a culture, it’s no wonder we’ve been resistant. But the
Wright brothers have already flown on this one. The
concept is alive and well, totally viable. All we need
to do is figure out how to implement it.

M2: You've seen functional devices actually running?

BO: Yes.

M2: Tiwari?

BO: Tiwari; Inamata. Tiwari is the chief project
Sua como Um Heo wee Tm eK om OCT La rm TerCy
under construction. He's getting ready to retire, so he
SM Oe AON Cw seme ieccccle Bill estecmev emits
government of India has given him laboratory space

BO: Exactly.

STORM ela Mae
BO: [smiling]

SL Ueaw WC mesma as eee Ca Tae

BO: Yes, they are:

Cag (ecm mri eneits cs

Twenty out for one in?

ees

M2: Describe zero eta se4 3 . : oS
The vacuum of space is filled with potential energy, like a reservoir with ome just have to know
OAC ae ON hACnCl mar tccocentaeh tote museccnuor stro mlm cierteedlociarrerrer ard
electromagnetic charge, within that field, through the rotary motion of magnets, such as N-machines, a
Tuwari type device, or a solid state device in which the electromagnetic charges are oscillating. This zero
jeetalas (Ce inyeleletocyAcere Crem Cero M Orme sss Ae ORC Ca aril eros

Ww
O

M2: The bases for this hypothesis?

BO: Physicists have come up with a number of reasons why this field must exist. John Archibald Wheeler has
said that one cubic centimeter of free space contains enough energy to evaporate all the oceans of the Earth,
something like ten to the hundred and fifteenth ergs. We haven't been aware of this field because it is homo-
OMSL e Bec oes Comarca enous CR eC RAOO Acree OnE eest caso aoR iC Reames lade
it using traditional means of measurement. But if we accelerate a charge in the presence of the field, then
we begin to have an interaction. .

M2: Sounds like this field supports the Pasa AO aa: universe; inertia. Mark Comings describes it as
energy of every conceiveable wavelength with perfectly symmetrical dynamically opposing vectors. He
METER ae ELC Shediac Fl slate TH done — od eels ie WSs eeacerende

ar Xe seni: sub penis iulasits igus aN BIET Ee ah rein tp RN rey tars (a
VRE CS Ucn cei tuactos incur tele out energy. Do we start to get PCE baa

BO: Yes.

Monee cyl ints

eae
Rs
a
Se

a
yy

wears
Bea
MIR Rate ge
ee
ee Sox
Sees
Sho neeosonetne
Re OREN

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ee
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Sees

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3
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eos
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ee se

sox

—

ESS
Se

oe
Lee

0: It pier on what you re ae
laa gold i in small amounts.

an tap into it with ape In a
mrey devices, oe in the phd run

‘neta. aes oe Petea inventions and On Gree and laid bare 0.0.E.

ft ligt toils) and the narrow band intellects of institutional science. This teal
PLACE pal look for new at=pVci ia) laste) ee commercially available products and investment
opportunities. Oh, yeah. And if you really want to win the science fair this year, check out
issue 14 and the cold fusion reaction you can initiate in your high school chem lab....

monpdo [96] 2000

ee eae ae ee Se

mars * spirit ‘homeopathy * martial arts
astrology "new science : arts & literature

Mars: The Living Planet
Aes — by Barry E. DiGregorio
ay $25.00 clothbound

This book examines evidence of

wivtwawn — Microbial life on Mars, highlighting
findings from Mars researcher Dr.
Gilbert Levin’s experiment aboard the
1976 Viking mission.

Rie nett sR En]

f/ Something in This Book is True...
by Bob Frissell
$14.95 trade paper

The much-anticipated sequel to
Frissell’s Nothing in This Book is
True continues the mind-bending
odyssey toward an evolved con-
sciousness. |

The Book of Theanna
by Ellias & Theanna Lonsdale
$16.95 trade paper

The author, a renowned astrologist,
channels the spirit of his deceased wife
aU atc-rarat et this seminal life-after-death text.

tel: (800)337-2665
fax: (510)559-8279

web: www.amazon.com
mail: P.O. Box 12327

Berkeley, CA 94712

Concord, NH 03302-2
Phone: (603) 228-451
Fax: (603) 224-5

me Cepia isthe ode
://ourworld.c
/homepages/Je

visit our website at
www.northatlanticbhooks.com

involved in the SDI Progra

erview

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RETURN

Virgin Interactive
oO OR orem loler 4

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT

It's at times like this—when you find yourself stumbling
around a sprawling, haunted mansion in the absolute
sepulchral dead of night, with the leaking, violated
remains of your colleague at your feet and yowling
Neve ccte bree ont leste( ait Ron bial ecena Rone eens eT
you think: "I'd ie a hell of a lot better if I had a rocket launcher
right about now.” But would you? Would you really?
Would it really make any difference, standing there in the
fouled-wood gloom of some claustrophobic corridor,
hearing the moaning, bloated, shambling thing coming
EVaeen Celie nu aeons Ome and knowing that any
seconc Pe leet going sa Ceca i

ATE rece Notre Irene cae find rare

Oca larom Vola

Resident Evil, converted for the PC from the best-
selling PlayStation title of the same name, is a
horror-movie buft’s dream—a cinematic, 3-D,
eerily atmospheric and bloody adventure game set
Mn tste magnificent but Rio Cee mi Cowen
estate whe efhings have oe ae ca ee

ead a T.ALR. , ) unit, ae noe moments
were searching the moonlit woods outside
red rec of your sister team. You
bits and pieces of their bodies at
at “ SE a Laat

i to-w all e

: Fees al eel
abominations.

Pte

What were you re Soe

Resident Evil is truly cinematic, with
the actions of your polygonal
ieretaCcanty lttece ce) and controlled
froma series of skewed camera
angles, Kubrick-style views down
dim hallways, paranoid fish-eyes
seOviaeURtT emu aeRO meee!
spaces, and long shots with slow,
~~ ambulatory dead men lurching into
-frame from somewhere off-camera
toward your character. Adding to the cinematic
experience is the occasional cut-scene, dramatically
advancing the action—when you enter a room or
per coyurneret eyes es (UAL ANC CEC meruhyol
1ence of events, control of the onscreen events
sly reverts to the computer, your current
| y letterboxing for a few moments, then
just as seamlessly aay ent to you again. For the
wre ae races Coevate hae erst wts terrier elael ment ceqa
, hanges to full-motion video which w melt
ate tension of the game. And tension
most every conv eee
are : r Roataee something horrible waiting
in it, and the ones that don’t will soon seem to be foo
quiet. In either case, the only appropriate stance to
adopt is the strangely macho paranoia that comes
with wandering around a big, scary house with a
gun in your Pent eatenl ae principle in
Rone itt Evil is that everything, human or not, bleeds.
FeO uM da ence coms eantaamlee elt
er amen in a spreading pool of mecha ata cart
ve, shoot it anyway, or it might sfart moving.
ee —surprise!—it gets up again, grabs noe
t your leg and Serr cre tens ing Ry n, giving you
‘0 choice but to kick its Reet mee nntC
necromantic oatmeal. When in Rome, baby.

ASL riN ANN (Olt! net if
winning demands ee <

_ down every last onlook

fly. That's right—instant cash for v Aa

@rncacare auc ee
Interplay Productions
800-462-2752

Bane Gao

ae no ae ae
dav CacmevaCemibtsie

The Timer. Qe your
Oley ashuecm era eremeetemanen tae
runs out, and you're golden.
It sounds harmless, bu tie
not—Carmageddon has harm
to spare, harm to burn. In
this race, the objective is to _

the course, destroying A
eeyeenteny ehicles or anand

businessman, window-shopr oe
beach-bunny and little old lady.
unlucky enough to still be on the street when
attend ete Rene UUeR crores SevauLeSace
mye ee Mo epeatavare cca elelkuaerzaneis
tlag-waver on the way oub-—then so be iL -
Every broadside ram inflicted on another ..
every innocent pedestrian liquetied on the -
sidewalk, every startled farm animal Since
helplessly in your sights before it's smeared
ec iaen instantly to cash,
which can be used to repair car erreeteeren dts

aL has no rules,

ae ioe eb

mene raee Orne.
only erties MO ar Les ce
Get the fuck out of Te ae

Ce LOR U ely
racing game, but the th
sa Coan oO far the ees

elaniey Sint column ofe is aa jockeying for
pole position begin to clash and scrape a
shriek against each other until one of the cars
breaks away, either by a eet maneuver or by
accident. Nine WUnNTecaeleiaty coum e era nes
ORO amen hvere riers. (acon mereemntennin
seconds the deadly, toy- like vehicles (sharklike
sports cars, spindly dragsters, wide-tired hearses)
are all over the road—colliding with each other,
sliding into walls, spinning up icy slopes, tum-
Pe) inTemen youre lesecrm eT lien hire nntecch am Tee RSET GUTS
through groups of ee ians, laying rubber
and blood, killing livestock and getting points—
multiple-kill and splatter
bonuses—for all of it. If
you survive the opening
le, you can race
st the clock to
a ite ircuit, or

: Postal oo

_ fk Lie oe |. i Her honk ee ahd i
3 fe ae hee ae Ki i,

eas Nagalin: &£

here is up-close and very —
aoe ACen Zar shouldn’
ye Sac if particul;
eles anny

feet sue

roaring past yot
pee DE

gonna

ake _ |
the words: Se Mar
but I’m not sure I’d ev a
mine—just i pun WM eo
io the i Teel

as Ace mM

killing only the armed and circling Johnny
Laws—but it doesn’t usually work out
that way. Automatic weapons are
notoriously innacurate, flaming gasoline
burns everything without distinction, and
a skipping girl-scout looks uncannily like
an ATF agent to a heat-seeking missile.

What's your goal as you kill your way

through truck stops, Main Streets and rural
trailer parks? Ultimately, you suspect the
Air Force must have something to do with
your being padlocked out of your house,

VITO mec eeN bent a ye)
your life, but that’s C
yealu (ea ee

non-tiled) eschew a years (ec ae
ee in lieu of ambient urban
sound effects which increase in volu:
nove: eg Biter agen

| woman's bie dilece
every hit is a clean
16s the only way to
Si (oie ate ceytae ee the wounded is to
walk up to the writhing victim and press
the ’X” key for a formal, solemn execution,
So oa with ominous incidental music.
_ Allthis sounds scary enough, but the
2 a alarming thing about ie anthem
game for late C20 America is its utility asa
dry run visualization tool for just such a
one-man rampage. One gears up; one
takes shots with an eye for opportunity,
for panic; one adopts guerilla tactics,
already running to the next attack point
even as the grenade just lobbed is causing
havoc in a crowd; one sticks to the alleys,
the defensible positions, the happy accidents
of obstruction and line of sight; one utilizes
the shielding advantages of noncombatants;
and one constantly thinks: ” What would
PCr evar an rom eel cae
Sick? You bet it’s sick—a kind of
do-it-yourself six o'clock news kit. The
only thing missing is the disgruntled trip to
visit the soon-to-be ex-boss or soon-to-be
ex-girlfriend at work... Well... maybe

aavares le oy-a err ee

_ all that on i Bo which is TONAL but ought

_ you opt for dining in, your remaining human
foes will not be idle—their guys are faster and

late aaeya a8)
Segasoft
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Bs in i

supergore of SegaSotft’s Flesh Feast a Contest ‘, e
of a relief, a psychic snack, an After Eight mint that just happens

to have a few stray flecks of bone and brain material in the mix.
Ae a ee Ce NO tote to Classis. e

gla: eee ie or multi-player PC game -
onanisland overrun by an army of the recently
reanimated. Just as in the movies, the goals for
the beleaguered humans are pretty straightforward:
shoot, chop or otherwise terminally disorganize

Played from an overhead and slightly offset
view, Flesh Feast takes place in the usual locales—
hospitals, graveyards—as well as some unlikely
and film-inspired ones—shopping malls, offices
and even an airport. The zombies are legion, but
slow and lumbering, and can be hacked into
manageable pieces with a variety of implements.
Flesh Feast is gory, to be sure, but it’s largely
guilt-free killing since the beings in question are
not strikingly human—and oughta be dead anyway.
In Flesh Feast’s multiplayer mode, you can
also play the bad, dead guys, lurching slowly but
in great numbers toward your human victims.
Kill one of the humans and you have two options
open to you that aren’t open to the human
players: either wait and let the recently-deceased
reanimate and become part of your undead
army... or just eat the guy right there. Peckish
players absorb not only a full day’s supply of
vitamins and minerals but also any useful
powers or attributes of the dearly departed. If

more dexterous than yours, and they have pistols,
shotguns, fire, elaborate traps, the trusty axe,
VCO Reet cmeKG IC MACCOMK RCN)
note the subtle modulation in the chain saw’s
sound effects as it saws through relatively soft
flesh, into relatively hard bone, and back out ©
again). In extreme cases, unarmed humans may have no choice
but to pick up recently amputated limbs—yours!—and use
them against you.

A final caveat: Flesh Feast has incredibly graphic cut-scenes—
the ones which involve brain-eating have some of the wettest,
most gruesome sound ota eda Seti onto a disk. [gz

MONDO [110] 2000

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